Gone to the Place of Foggy Dreams
by nightwish435
Summary: Raven has long kept the story of her home world of Azarath secret from the other Teen Titans, for reasons unknown. After Robin has a horrific nightmare involving Azarath itself, Raven is suddenly kidnapped by members of a strange cult, and taken back to Azarath for a wicked purpose. With a mysterious ally helping them from the shadows, the Titans journey to Azarath to find Raven.
1. Nightmare's Herald

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this work. The characters belong to their respective owners.**

"Raven, what was Azarath like?"

Robin and Raven sat together in the living room of the Tower, while their three friends were sound asleep in the rooms down the hall. Outside, darkness had fallen, the stars softly twinkling over Jump City, which had been finally rid of the Titan's biggest antagonists a few years after they had vanquished the demon Trigon from the face of the Earth.

Raven slowly blinked in confusion and asked him "Why are you asking?"

He shrugged and told her "I'm just curious, that's all."

"Fine then."

As she glanced at the evening sky outside their window, Raven let out a soft sigh, a faraway look on her face as Robin waited for her to begin.

"Azarath was…it was paradise. A realm where war never harmed anybody, where peace was the law of the land. Nobody got sick, nobody tried to resolve conflicts with hatred and violence. It was a refuge for those of us who were weary of the horrors here on Earth. From what the monks told me, our first leader, the first Azar, gathered many people with that outlook on life centuries ago and took them to this new home where they could finally be granted that which they had craved for so long."

"You should've seen it. All of the buildings there were made of the purest metals, like gold, bronze, silver, and even marble in some areas. The City was filled with these massive skyscrapers that were our homes, and made us feel as if we were never alone…almost as if the buildings themselves were looming over us protectively. These pillars were built in clumps around the City, and in between them, if you looked hard enough, you'd be lucky to find a small, winding path between the buildings that could be used to find some alone time for a while. I guess you could say that these paths were like some of the alleyways here in Jump City."

"And…one of the biggest traditions back on Azarath was to pray and meditate, three times a day, at dawn, noon and dusk, for our peace to touch Earth, for all wars to cease. When it was time to pray, this soft, soothing prayer horn could be heard resounding throughout the city, its clarion call gathering us all to the city's center to meditate together."

Robin nodded along as she spoke, and asked her when she finished "What was your mother like? I've never heard you even mention her."

Raven muttered back "I…I don't want to talk about it."

She suddenly bolted from the room, her cloak whirling about her feet as she walked briskly down the corridor and out of sight, the sound of her door opening and closing echoing slightly. Robin looked down the hall at her direction in shock.

" _Well, that was…weird. I guess she really doesn't want to talk about her Mom."_

A wave of exhaustion hit Robin, forcing a yawn and a stretch out of him. He headed towards his own room, taking a quick glance at the Titan's group portrait nesting on the table.

Each of them was wearing their typical look, Robin coolly gazing at the camera, Starfire bouncing up and down with exuberant joy, Beast Boy and Cyborg both goofing off with their facial expressions, and of course, Raven solemnly gazing at the camera, devoid of emotion.

In his room, Robin collapsed on his bed, rapidly drifting off to sleep as he dwelled on the mystery of Raven's past.

* * *

 _In his dreams, Robin found himself standing alone in a place blanketed in a thick, white fog decorated with what appeared to be softly falling snow. All around him, massive buildings made of what appeared to be bronze and marble loomed into the grey sky above, their heights extending far beyond the Empire State Building. The streets were paved with a smooth granite-like material that showed no signs of wear. Not a single person was in sight._

 _He looked around him, bewildered, not knowing where he was. Nothing in his surroundings resembled Jump City._

 _His ponderings were interrupted by the soft sound of footsteps echoing only a few feet away from him. Robin immediately whirled about and saw a slim figure robed in white calmly walking in front of him._

"Is that…Raven?" _Robin wondered, as the figure came to a stop directly in his line of sight. They appeared to be a female, but Robin couldn't tell for sure that she was his friend._

" _Hey, Raven!"_

 _He was given no response other than the mysterious person taking a few more steps away from him and further into the fog._

 _Robin momentarily paused in confusion before shouting at her "Hey, stop for a minute!"_

 _At that, the figure began to dash off into the fog, quickly fading away as Robin gave chase. She slipped in and out of sight as Robin did his best to keep up. The buildings around him began to rise up in tight clusters, leaving little room to maneuver. Up ahead, he heard what sounded like a gate opening and closing. When he finally made it down the lane he was on, he saw an intricate door that looked to be made of silver carved into the marble wall on his right, with a poem in blue scrawled on it:_

" _Beyond this door lies the Path of Reflection;_

 _Tread this way carefully, for beware:_

 _The most horrific nightmares are one's darkest memories buried too deep."_

"Path of Reflection? Whatever, let's go already!"

 _Robin yanked open the gate and stepped beyond, only to recoil at what he saw._

 _What looked like a long, blackened scorch mark lay in a jagged design across the area, lacerating the side of the building to his left and extending all across the ground in front of him. There was an acrid scent of smoke and ash around him, as if it was still fresh._

 _At the same moment he saw the scorch mark, Robin flinched as a soft siren-like noise began to echo from somewhere in the mysterious city, rising and falling slowly in a mesmerizing fashion. He paused, beginning to recall the conversation that he had had with Raven the night before._

"Is this supposed to be the prayer horn she was talking about?" _he thought as he hesitantly walked across the scorch mark towards the narrow passage looming between the skyscrapers up ahead._ "If it is…then why am I so afraid?"

 _The noise, if it was the same horn that Raven had mentioned, was failing to calm him; Robin could feel a chill running up and down his spine as the baleful noise droned on and on._

 _He pressed on into the alleyway, bolting down the cramped passage, desperately hoping that he could find Raven and ask her where he was, and what had happened to this strange place. As he journeyed further into the passage, turning corners as fast as he could, Robin failed to see that a strange darkness was beginning to descend, the meek grey light starting to vanish._

 _Just as he rounded what seemed like the final bend, the darkness fell completely, and the chilling horn in the distance suddenly erupted into an awful roar that nearly knocked Robin off his feet with its ferocity. His shivers turned into body-wide shuddering as he groped madly for something to illuminate the yawning void all around him._

"What the hell is going on?!"

 _After a few moments of fumbling around, Robin managed to find a flashlight that he hardly had any use for up until now. With a click, the darkness was barely illuminated, showing that the gold and bronze structure of the buildings around him were beginning to look somehow corroded with something scarlet. The snow around him had become drizzling rain that made a slight hissing sound as it landed all around him. It may have been his imagination, but Robin thought that the whole area was starting to overheat, though he couldn't tell where the source was._

 _Robin made himself walk further into the passage, and jumped a bit in fright when he registered a sinister creaking not too far ahead of him. He crept up to one of the decaying walls carefully, and moved the beam of light so that it revealed the rotating object. A large circular mural was spinning counterclockwise by itself, an image of a massive red-skinned creature with a twisted visage leering over what looked like the burning remains of a city._

" _ **Trigon**_ _…" Robin whispered as he recognized the monstrosity, his shudders intensifying as memories flashed through his mind of a gigantic demon that had nearly wiped out the Earth before Raven had seemingly destroyed him with a burst of her power._

 _Moving further down the alleyway provided no relief, for just a few feet from the mural stood a deteriorated statue made of what may have once been marble, depicting a white-robed woman in prayer. To Robin's horror, the woman's head had been decapitated clean from her shoulders, and where the head had been, crimson blood was spilling over the rest of her body. Adding to the horror was a new sound that seemed to be emanating from just beyond the statue: a terrible metallic screeching, like nails on a chalkboard amplified to the highest degree._

 _As he made himself turn away from the statue, Robin shakily continued through the alleyway, registering the hideous scent of burnt blood and metal filling the air around him. The walls of the building, already corrupted with scarlet rust, were beginning to bend and twist in on themselves as he further progressed. Claw marks etched into the walls and splatters of blood began to show up all around him as the roaring horn and awful screeching continued to echo throughout the area._

" _Raven, where are you?" Robin shouted into the darkness, anxiety crippling him to the point that he could barely keep himself moving._

 _At last, he neared the end of the passage, a small cul-de-sac, and a dead end. Robin hesitantly swung his light around the area, and yelled in shock when he registered the body pinned to the wall in front of him._

 _A corpse was nailed to the ruined bronze wall, clad in what was once an elegant robe, but now burnt beyond recognition. Its face looked almost featureless, like a wax doll melted by fire. The torso of the corpse was ripped open and reduced to a charred, grisly mess, the ribcage and spine poking out through the blackened mass._

 _Robin quickly retreated a few steps back before he heard other footsteps just behind him. He whirled about and saw a cowed man in an ashen gray robe approaching him with his head bowed. Utterly confused, Robin waved the light beam over the man, prompting the stranger to look up at him._

 _The seemingly crippled man had a face twisted in unspeakable agony. He reached out towards Robin with arms that looked twisted, and when the man opened his mouth, instead of any coherent words, a pained scream erupted._

 _Without warning, the man burst into flames, hot fire pouring out of his mouth and eyes, his screaming joined by dozens of others stumbling into the passageway's dead end. Men, women and children hobbled into the cul-de-sac, shrieking in pain as they clawed at the air and clutched themselves, trying in vain to put out the fires consuming their bodies. All of them were bending and twisting as they moved towards Robin, almost like embers dancing in a fireplace. The stench of rotting, burning flesh, combined with the putrescent smell of the rain mixing with the blood in the area began to choke Robin as he desperately searched for an escape route._

 _The blackened sky slowly turned an infernal orange as all over the darkened city, massive pillars of fire began to consume the buildings, the metal screeching as the buildings collapsed in on themselves and rapidly decayed. The whole city seemed to be turning into Hell itself. From every direction, the roaring air horn, the bellowing flames, the screeching of the twisting metal and the screams of the people blended into an utterly nightmarish cacophony._

 _The mob of burning humans closed in on him, and just as Robin was about to scream her name for help, they all at once began to wail_ "Raven! Raven! **RAVEEEEEEEEN!** "

* * *

" **RAVEN!"**

Robin bolted upright in his bed, soaked in sweat and panting heavily. He yanked the sheets off his bed in a fury and dashed down the halls towards Raven's room, yearning for some comfort and help after his horrible nightmare.

When he got to the door of her room, he knocked on the door heavily, but no answer was given. He tried to yank it open, but as always, her door was locked tight. Robin growled in frustration and nearly ripped the metal covering off of the keypad next to the door, pounding in the key code and making the door finally slide open.

Greeting him was a group of four astonished men in dark red robes, one of them wearing what looked like a painted skull on his face. The men were carrying a long bundle in their arms that was covered in a black cloth with blood-red runes etched all over it. Next to them was a swirling red portal, and it was evident that they were in the process of going through it to whatever lay on the other side.

The man with the painted skull spat " **Arella!"** at the sight of Robin in the doorway, whose confusion quickly turned to anger at the realization that the bundle in their arms had to be none other than Raven herself. Robin snarled at the intruders and slammed his fist on the alarm button hidden in the doorway, causing the warning system to blare into life throughout the Tower.

He made a mad run towards the men, who quickly moved towards the portal, taking Raven in their arms. Their leader sneered and waved his hand at Robin in an almost dismissive fashion, sending a violet wave of energy crashing into the boy, and sending him hurtling backwards into his comrades, who had just come down the corridor in time to see what was happening. All three of them were still in their pajamas, not prepared for the incursion happening in their home.

"Stop, intruder!" Starfire yelled as she sent blasts of green energy hurtling towards the men. Her blasts were easily deflected by the skull man, who cackled as he and his fellows successfully fled through the red portal, which dissipated with a hiss soon after they disappeared.

The four Teen Titans looked at the spot where the portal had been, a myriad of emotions raging through them all as they gasped for air. Robin tried to stand, and fell back to the ground with a grunt, alarming his friends.

"What the hell did they do to you man?!" Beast Boy shouted as he and Cyborg helped Robin stand up, carefully wrapping his arms around their shoulders and doing their best to stop him from stumbling again. Starfire bit her lip in worry and followed them as they walked slowly to the living room.

Robin groaned as they laid him down on the couch and lifted off his nightshirt. The spot where the man's blast had hit him was marked by a hideous black and purple bruise that made Robin yelp in pain when his teammates touched it.

He grimaced and told them about his nightmare, and what he had seen when he had tried to find Raven for guidance.

"When I got to her room, I found her wrapped up in that weird cloth, and for some reason, she wasn't doing anything to resist. I don't know if they drugged her, knocked her out, or bound her someway else, but they definitely managed to subdue her somehow. And I don't know how the hell we're supposed to find her now. Heck, I don't even know how they managed to creep up on her, even if she was asleep. This is all happening way to fast, and that damned nightmare is still haunting me too."

Cyborg shrugged his shoulders helplessly and told him "Look man, don't blame yourself too much here, none of us had a clue that this would be happening. Right now, we need to treat this bruise or whatever it is you've got, and we need to start looking for clues on Raven's whereabouts."

"I will go and find the first-aid kit!" Starfire said, zooming down the hall while the three boys remained collapsed in dejection.

Starfire returned a moment later, carrying their large box of medicine and bandages, yanking out a cream for burns. When she tried to apply it to Robin's wound, he screamed in pain and arched his back, frightening his friends.

"Dammit, what should we do?" Cyborg asked them as Robin tried to calm himself down. "If we don't get this thing treated, Robin could be in serious trouble!"

Before anybody could offer any opinions, the soft sound of flapping wings made them pause. From down the corridor, a small, glowing dove was gently flying towards them, its light illuminating the darkness in the building. It was slightly larger than the average birds that took to flying around the top of the tower during the day, and its color was a pristine, pure white. Robin realized that it had the exact same shade of white to it as the robed woman from the nightmare. It landed on his torso and bowed its head, closing its eyes and remaining utterly still as its light began to slowly expand.

To their shock, Robin's wound began to rapidly disappear as the aura surrounding the bird enveloped it completely. Within a matter of seconds, Robin's body was as good as new. The dove hopped off as Robin shakily stood up, gawking at his bare torso and wondering what had just happened.

"Dude…what…?" Beast Boy tried to speak, his jaw wide open in awe at what they had just seen happen.

The dove cocked its head at them all, and flew towards the middle of the room, flapping its wings calmly as it seemed to focus on the spot just in front of it. Once again, its aura expanded, and with a nod of its small head, the energy coalesced in front of it into a glimmering portal that perfectly resembled the one the Titans had seen in Raven's room.

As the portal swirled softly, the dove flew into it, leaving the Titans to gawk at the series of marvels happening around them. Robin hesitantly walked towards it, inspecting it carefully, remembering the first half of the dream, and the strange female figure who had walked into his sight for barely a minute.

" _This has something to do with that lady…I'm sure of it. If that's Raven, then this dove just gave us the chance to find her. No doubt, this portal…it'll take us all to that place. Azarath."_

He turned to his friends and told them all firmly "Guys, get ready to go. I want us all back in this room within the next 5 minutes if possible ready to depart through this portal. We're gonna go find Raven."

They all uttered baffled noises, Starfire saying back to him "But Robin, we must be careful! We do not know where this odd swirly object will take us!"

Cyborg chimed in, retorting "And look dude, we don't know who we're up against! You know what that man did to you! Hell, we could get ourselves killed by these people! Aren't you afraid at all?!"

"Please, man, slow down for a second, you know they're right!" Beast Boy begged him.

Robin sighed and bowed his head in acknowledgement of their warnings, and said softly to them "You better believe that I'm just as afraid as you guys are. But we can't let fear of the unknown stop us from rescuing our friend. You know that. Even if Raven was paralyzed with fear, if she knew that we were kidnapped, she would do everything in her power to get us back. We owe it to her as her comrades and friends to go find her."

The other three Titans grimaced and finally nodded in agreement, turning to run down to their rooms and make hasty preparations to leave. Robin crept back to his room and dressed up in his usual uniform, but also adorning it with a handgun he had purchased for emergencies, and stocking his belt with a few boxes of ammunition.

He gave the weapon a look of disgust, thinking _"Usually, I would never resort to this sort of thing…but I have a sense that ultimately, what we're standing up against won't be remotely human."_

When he returned to the living room, he saw his friends fully dressed and gathered around the glowing white portal, which hadn't faded away one bit. He looked at all of them and nodded, feeling an unmistakable dread creeping over them all as they moved towards the portal, its energy humming faintly.

Just before he walked through, Robin realized that their group portrait had somehow disappeared from the table in the middle of the room. He deemed it unimportant for the time being and shrugged it off, determined to focus solely on finding Raven.

"Let's go."

Robin led them into the portal, which crackled as they moved through it. There was a momentary flash of light, and then, they all emerged on the other side, gazing hesitantly around them at their new surroundings.

Robin was back in the starting point of the nightmare, the metal skyscrapers looming far up above them all, with the same fog and snow blanketing their sight on all sides. His friends were gawking at the sight, unsure of how they should take it in. The portal fizzled away behind them, leaving them alone within the strange place.

Beast boy muttered "Dude, this feels so unreal. So…dreamlike, even. And where is everybody else? Shouldn't a city this big have people walking all over it?"

Starfire whispered "I do not like the feeling of this place, my friends. I believe that, despite the size of this place, we just might be the only people walking around right now."

The fog swirled slowly all over the city, obscuring their line of sight to only the barest outlines of the buildings and what lay a few feet in front of them. Cyborg glanced around them and shuddered.

"This is way too quiet. Not to mention, this place is huge! How are we supposed to find Raven here when we don't even know where to start?"

A murmur of agreement passed between Starfire and Beast Boy as Robing thought quickly about what to do. A map seemed out of the question, and none of his devices on hand could work efficiently in their foreign surroundings. He looked down the road in front of them, trying to retrace his footsteps from the nightmare.

"Guys…" he said softly, "I think we're in Raven's home world. The place she called 'Azarath'." Robin steeled himself and knelt into a running position.

"Follow me" he told them abruptly, bursting into a dash down the street with his friends running behind him and yelling for him to slow down.

He led them down the smaller side street that he had chased the robed stranger down, and barreled towards where the silver door had been in the dream. To his disappointment, when they arrived at the spot, the door had disappeared. What had been the entrance to an alleyway in his dream was now nothing more than part of the city, nothing beyond the wall except the side of a building, no sign that anything resembling an alley had ever existed at that spot.

"Damn it!" he spat, snarling in irritation and having to restrain himself from punching the marble wall in fury.

Beast Boy tried to calm him down, telling him "Hey dude, chill, we'll just have to look for another starting point, that's all."

Before Robin could snap at him, Starfire interrupted them both, hesitantly asking them "Um, perhaps I am going crazy, but I see something written here on the wall."

They all walked closer to the wall, and sure enough, in place of the note marking the alleyway Robin had tread as the "Path of Reflection", a longer message had been written in the same blue color.

" _The Path has been closed, but fret not, for a new way has been opened to guide you. Though the road is treacherous, at its end, you will find that which you so desperately seek._

 _To the four winds you must go, to find four pieces of truth that shall overcome the corrupting lies._

 _To the West the Eagle must fly, to the den of knowledge and the beginning of torment, to unleash his grace against the emotional ravages of the past._

 _East is the path that the Lion will take, and it is there, deep underground where shadows lie in wait, that courage must be used to light the way._

 _In the recesses of the South, the Ox will find great use for his strength, in a place of contradictions, of weapons in a place of peace._

 _And at the end, the Human will journey to the uppermost reaches of the North, to the shelter of truth, and use his humility to undo the rampage within._

 _Fight and conquer at the speed of the wind, before darkness utterly blots out the remaining light."_

The four Titans stood in confusion as they all tried to process the meaning of the message. Cyborg slowly spoke up first.

"Well, I'm guessing that somebody, maybe even Raven, left this to guide us to her somehow. I think each of us are supposed to go different ways to find these…uh, 'pieces of truth'. Seeing as I'm the strongest, I'm assuming that I'm the 'Ox'."

Starfire looked closely at the message and muttered "Well, Robin, I am assuming that, because you are already named after one bird, you are the 'Eagle' in this message."

"Uh, I guess. But what about you two?"

Beast Boy and Starfire looked at each other sheepishly and tried to work out the remaining clues.

"I mean, both of us are brave…" Beast Boy said, scratching his head thoughtfully. "But honestly Star, I remember how you beat your sister's ass so hard, and didn't bow down in front of her. You're the bravest out of us all, really. You're definitely the 'Lion' here."

Starfire blushed profusely as Beast Boy went on.

"But…I guess that means that I'm the 'Human'. But why me? Not to be funny, but humility really isn't something I'm known for, if you catch my drift."

Robin shrugged indifferently and said "Well, it works for me. Are you guys ok with splitting up?"

The other three nodded carefully. All four of them were understandably nervous, seeing as they were about to embark on a journey through a massive city potentially filled with hidden dangers lying in wait.

Cyborg glanced at his friends and told them "Don't forget to use your watches and update each other. The last thing we need is for somebody else to disappear after what just happened."

The group nodded solemnly and made their way towards the main road. As they walked a little further, they came to a crossroads splitting off in four different directions. The four Titans waved at each other and dashed off into the fog, each headed towards their respective directions, guided only by Starfire's intimate knowledge of directions and the desire to find Raven as soon as possible.

" _Hang in there, Raven!"_ Robin thought desperately as he ran with all his power down the path. _"We're coming for you!"_


	2. The Halls of Trauma

Robin ran as fast as he could in what Starfire had told him was West in the massive, lonely city. The fog and snow swirled around him as he pounded down the twisting path set before him. At a three-branching crossroads up ahead, he saw blue lettering inscribed on a massive bronze post showing that the right-hand path led to the school.

He dashed down the direction, huffing and hoping that he would find the school soon.

" _Gotta find…this 'piece of truth'"_ Robin thought desperately as the road wound endlessly before him. _"But what on earth am I supposed to be looking for? And what did that poem mean by getting rid of the 'corrupting lies'? How could a lie turn this place into a living Hell?"_

Just as he was about to round the corner on what he hoped was the last stretch of the path, darkness rapidly set in all around him, grey fading to black in a mere matter of seconds. Robin stood shuddering with anxiety, waiting for that awful "prayer horn" to start roaring in the distance once more. After standing still for a while, nothing could be heard besides the ominous wind blowing through the looming buildings.

" _Not again…please, please no…I just want to find Raven and get out of here…"_

With a gulp of terror, Robin seized his flashlight and turned it on, barely illuminating the path in front of him. A meek beam of light appeared to illuminate the few feet in front of him, showing that somehow, the layout of the street and buildings had remained unchanged, save for the pitch blackness in all sight.

Robin walked the corner, and at last, beheld what had to be the school building towering in the distance. A massive, single-tiered white building stood firmly erect up ahead, rectangular and big enough that it could've easily held students of all ages, up to perhaps even college-aged. He walked hesitantly towards it, half-expecting another horrifying transformation of the area or another flaming human to come screaming out of the darkness.

Upon coming closer to the entrance, Robin viewed a small garden in a miniature plaza in front of the massive bronze doors leading inside. In the middle of the garden stood a tall statue of a robed woman with her hands clasped firmly in prayer.

" _Wait a minute…"_ Robin eyed the statue warily, the nightmare once again flashing in his mind, _"this is the same statue that I saw in that alley…except this one has its head on its shoulders."_

He walked around the garden and up to the bronze doors, which easily stood at more than twice his height. Robin gave the doors a careful push, and with only a little resistance, they swung open into the dark hall beyond.

In front of Robin lay what must've been the main hallway, with dozens of rooms lined up on both sides. He waved his flashlight across the doors, evidently made of silver, with copper doorknobs and bronze plates on top of the doorway, etched with that mysterious blue script. Large, intricate characters vaguely resembling eastern Asian languages lay on top of smaller English words announcing the room's purpose.

Robin attempted to open many of the rooms, but failed over and over again, as they appeared to be locked. None of the doors budged until he ventured farther down the hall and came across a room labeled as " _ **History**_ " in that elegant handwriting. Robin twisted the door knob and pushed, gaining an unexpected entrance at last.

Inside, massive shelves containing numerous tomes and scrolls lined the walls, and several tables laid scattered across the room, with opened books spread across. In the very middle of the room, a candle that seemed recently lit stood guard over a rather thick tome that had been opened to its very first pages. Robin walked up to it and gazed down at it, squinting as he attempted to read the musty-looking writing.

" _ **The Creation of Azarath"**_

" _More than 500 years ago, during a time when the Earth was in a constant state of war, turmoil and death, one lone woman with inherent spiritual powers and a strong desire for true peace sought out like-minded individuals who longed to escape the horrors surrounding their existences. Together, the woman named Azar and her followers opened a portal into an interdimensional realm of then unshaped beauty, hidden somewhere on a plane of reality out of the perception of normal human sight. The portal that they had created would eventually become known as the Great Door, the cornerstone of the Temple that would be built on the spot of their entrance into this blessed realm._

 _Within a short amount of time, Azar and her fellow humans, by their combined inherent powers and the dreams of Paradise that had given them the will to live back on Earth, created a wondrous City built of marble and various precious materials that far surpassed the greatest cities of their previous realm. Within the first year of the entrance into this quiet realm, the City of Azarath was built, the embodiment of these humans' hopes and dreams._

 _From the time of our City's creation to the present era, all of us pray earnestly, night and day to the Divine for Earth to gain the peace we know and cherish. Each of our beloved leaders, the woman who calls herself 'Azar', and the daughters that followers her in succession every few centuries, have tasked us to use the Great Door to return to Earth to save lost souls in desperate need of love, to bring them back here in order for them to know true peace. It is our duty as those who cherish the Divine to both give our hearts and our actions to the broken world that so many call home."_

Robin stood in silence, pondering the text and searching his memories with Raven, attempting to remember if she had ever mentioned this knowledge in passing.

" _I think Raven barely mentioned the name of her home to Starfire some time ago…but no, she never gave any of us any details beyond that."_

After taking one last look around the room and determining that there was nothing else of value to be found, he left and closed the door behind him, heading to his left and further down the silent hall.

The only other door open in the dark hall was the last door on the right, which had a plate above it marking it as a classroom. Robin hesitantly twisted the knob and opened the door, a strange feeling of dread washing over him.

Inside, rows of marble desks built into the floor lay in front of him, with a larger rectangular table, presumably where the teacher sat, sitting at the front. Robin gazed around him warily, looking for a clue of sorts. He walked up to the teacher's table and ran his hand over it, gently rustling the worn papers lying on top of it. None of it was readable, as the only words on the papers were from the strange language of the empty world the Titans had entered, the intricate runes impossible to decipher.

" **Help me!"**

Robin jerked his head up in fright as he beheld a mob of white robed children centered around one of the middle desks, shrieking with cruel laughter as they shoved, kicked and punched a small figure trapped in their midst. All of them had suddenly appeared in the room without warning.

"Hey, stop it!" Robin shouted, and just as he made a move towards the children, a tall man robed in the same white cloth lazily walked into the room, pausing to glance at the scene before him.

Upon closer inspection, Robin recoiled as he recognized the face of the man who had erupted into flames in the dead end of the alleyway, the memory of the stranger's unearthly screams reechoing.

The figure in the middle of the crowd wailed out to the man "Please, Mr. Joach, help me! Save me!"

The children all paused and turned to the man, tensing up as they waited for him to respond. To Robin's fury, all he did was sneer, take a seat at the table, and fold his hands calmly as the girl's look of horror amplified immensely.

"Why would I give you any help, you wretched half-demonic whelp?" he coldly asked the girl, who was now whimpering. The rest of the kids cackled, and resumed their tormenting of the petite child.

As she cried out in terror and pain, Robin watched in bewilderment as all of the figures suddenly faded away, disappearing from sight like mist. He was left shaken to the core, and with more questions left unanswered.

" _That…was that…Raven?"_ he wondered, as he recalled his friend's smaller form in the small period of time before she had banished Trigon from the Earth, when her demonic father had seemingly ended their world. _"Why didn't that bastard do anything to help her?! She was totally defenseless!"_

Robin made himself walk over to where the scene had unfolded, and found that there were numerous scratches on one of the middlemost desks, the one that the childlike version of Raven had been trapped next to. More of the strange Azarathian runes were etched into her desk, jagged and vicious. What clearly had to be nail scratches, probably from the poor girl struggling to not be yanked about by her classmates, lay scattered around the runes. Though he couldn't hope to translate them, Robin had an unpleasant sense that he was reading cruel insults in the language of their world.

He walked towards the door, and paused again, a sinister thought encroaching upon him.

" _She didn't…set this 'Joach' and everybody else on fire to get revenge…did she?"_

The image of the screaming mob of white-robed people flashed through his mind, and Robin was barely able to shake it out as he walked towards the end of the hallway, where stairs descended into the lower level of the school. Robin began the long descend into the pitch black basement of Azarath's school.

Down below, Robin's flashlight barely managed to illuminate the steps and the hallway beyond. There were no doors lining the sides of these walls, only a lone passageway leading to a massive room at the end. With his light in hand, Robin could barely make out a pedestal rising up into the middle of the room in the distance.

When he finally entered the large room, his flashlight revealed that it was an indoor amphitheater of sorts, with a wide circular slab of granite set in the middle of the floor, rising up in the sight of huge rows of theater-like seats gazing down towards it, the rings of stone seats rising up out of sight into the darkness above. Robin saw more stone steps leading up to the pedestal, and he ascended them, hoping to finally find another clue about what was happening.

On top of the massive slab, Robin found a pedestal set near the middle of the circle, where one lone piece of paper sat idly. He walked up to it and found to his relief that the words were completely in English.

" _Mommy told me that back on Earth, there was a man who once said that 'all the world's a stage.'_

 _If that's true, then this stage that I must stand on, in front of these horrible people who mock me, scream those horrible words at me, hurt me…even the teachers, who only laugh at my pain and do nothing to ease it…_

 _this stage, this world, is my Hell."_

"Raven…" Robin whispered sadly, images floating through his head involving what his friend must have suffered in this school. He could only imagine what it had to feel like, to have every single person, child and adult, openly against you, and out to make your daily existence a living nightmare.

He was startled by the sudden sound of somebody sobbing only a few feet away from him. Robin whirled around and beheld an image of Raven, still as a child of no more than 9 years old, collapsed on the steps of the slab, clutching at herself and weeping profusely. When he attempted to go near her, she fled back towards the dark hallway in the distance, making Robin give chase.

He huffed and puffed, calling out "Raven, wait up!", even though he was barely aware that the girl running away couldn't possibly hear him. She dashed towards the far end of the hall and knelt down at a random spot, still weeping and placing her small hands on the smooth surface. Robin watched her disappear just as he caught up to her.

The wall at first inspection didn't seem out of the ordinary whatsoever. Robin squatted down and made the flashlight zoom in on the spot where Raven's hands had been placed. He squinted for a few seconds, and finally saw that there was the smallest of cracks marking a small piece of the wall in front of him. When he grabbed at the crack and pulled, the piece of the wall slowly swung open, to reveal a crawling space barely wide enough for him to go through. At the very end of the tunnel was an equally small door, with a tiny groove for opening.

Robin grunted as he squirmed through the small passage, wondering what he would see on the other side. He jumped in fright when he heard the section of wall behind him swing shut on its own. With terror speeding his nerves up, the Titan wriggled quickly to the end of the tunnel, and managed to yank the door open by grasping at the groove. The door, which seemed to be made of silver like the door he had seen in his dream, swung open with an ominous creak.

When he clambered out into the other side, he heard the door close by itself too, and to his terror, the horrible air horn suddenly blared into life up above, its chilling noise reverberating through the walls. Robin made a futile attempt to open the door, his heart on the verge of collapsing, it was beating so fast. To his chagrin, the door had somehow locked itself, leaving him no choice but to move forward.

Upon inspection, he was now in a tight space that somewhat resembled a dressing room, with what looked like a small bench jutting out of the wall. The surfaces of the room, either because of Robin's paranoia or a trick of the light, looked like they had been corroded by the same scarlet rust that had ruined the metal walls of the alleyway.

On the bench lay a propped up, shattered mirror, a sprig of what looked like dried chamomile, a small pink gemstone curiously shaped like a bullet, and a piece of paper with a short amount of English writing on it. Robin shuddered as he heard the prayer horn roaring through the walls, and bent closer to the paper to read it.

" _This gemstone, Rhodochrosite, has long been treasured in our culture as a stone that overcomes self-hatred and trauma of the past with an unconditional love that nothing negative can hope to replace. It is believed that using this stone can give one the grace to let go of painful memories, in order to live a peaceful future. Because of its beautiful pink color and its association with love, Rhodochrosite is thought to be connected to one's Heart Chakra."_

Robin glanced at the gemstone and chose to pocket it after a moment of consideration. He noted that the mirror's shards had bits of rusted blood on them, probably from somebody punching it to pieces. A hundred copies of his eyes looked up at him warily from the broken mirror, and Robin had to yank his head away before the sight kept him mesmerized permanently.

He looked around the room, and found a rusted metal ladder rising up into the darkness, presumably towards the ground floor. With the prayer horn echoing menacingly all around him, and his heart beating through his chest, Robin gripped the first rungs and made himself move up into the darkness.

" _For Raven…for this 'piece of truth'…I have to keep going!"_

The ladder ended at a small tunnel similar to what had led him to the hideaway room. Robin squeezed through it towards the tiny door at the end, and he felt beads of sweat rolling off his body as the heat all around him quickly climaxed, just like the area in his nightmare. He finally reached the door, and just as he placed his hand in the groove, the air horn slowly faded out, echoing for a few final sinister moments before disappearing. Robin yanked the door open, and crawled out to behold the hellish transformation that had overtaken the school.


	3. Into the Abyss

**Trigger Warning: Assisted Suicide**

An overwhelming stench of iron hit him as he took in the walls splattered with crimson blood, the material of the school now soaked in it. Glaring out from the mess were more of those jagged Azarathian runes, massive and glowing in a harsh red light. The doors that Robin could see where all barred by jail cell doors, the metal composing them rusted to ruin. He seized his gun and readied it, not knowing what sort of monstrosity would be stumbling his way this time.

Harsh, guttural laughter could be heard around the corner of the hallway, and Robin hesitantly creeped towards the source, doing his best not to panic. He slowly peaked around the corner, and beheld a mob of blackened, demonic looking children and taller monstrosities in red robes bellowing with a horrible laughter. The things had piercing gray eyes that were narrowed with malice.

The demons saw Robin, and all at once, they pointed clawed fingers at him, roared and rage, and began to rapidly advance towards him. The smaller demons held chunks of some sort of dark rock in their hands, and Robin watched as they raised them, preparing to stone him. He gritted his teeth, raised his gun, and began firing shots into the crowd.

Robin's first magazine was quickly emptied, as the monstrosities each took too many bullets to kill. The children required easily 3 bullets to die, and the larger ones, which Robin thought resembled "Joach", seemed impossible to take down. He backed away from the mob, trying to reload more ammo into his handgun. With only 2 boxes of ammunition with him, he knew that he was in a bind.

As he continued to back away and fire, the children threw their stones at him, and Robin had to quickly time his dodges to avoid being bludgeoned. There was nowhere else to run but behind him, as he desperately attempted to run into the surrounding rooms, but all of them were locked, on top of being barred by the twisted jail bars. The large and small demons roared in a garbled language at him as they pushed him further and further down towards the main entrance, which was now barricaded by even large bars.

Just as he thought his luck was about to run out, Robin blindly lunged out and felt a door to his left unlock, and the jail bars swung open. Without hesitating a moment further, he fled inside, slammed the door shut, and heard it lock itself.

He was back in the History room, and whatever corruption that had overtaken the halls of Azarath's schools had reached into here as well. Everything in sight had rusted over, and blood was splattered everywhere. Hanging just within sight of the shadows was what seemed to be instruments of torture, large cages hanging down from the ceiling, along with twisted tools laying scattered around the room. The bookcases were ruined with blood, and the tomes themselves had been thrown about the room, lying in heaps. Only the few books on the scarlet metal tables in the middle of the room had seemed to be untouched.

Robin cautiously approached the table from before, his flashlight serving as the only source of illumination, as the candle from before had disappeared. The opened tome initially appeared to be unchanged, until Robin registered with a grimace the image of Trigon leering up at him, next to a large body of text.

 **"Trigon"**

 _"Hundreds of years ago, when the first Azar, our first leader lead our forefathers and foremothers to this sacred place, the evil tendencies of the Earth still clung to their souls, and together, they desperately searched for a way to purge this darkness from themselves for all eternity. And so, Azar, bade them to gather in the Temple of the City, where stands the Great Door, a massive portal between the varying dimensions of reality. She opened the way to the Void, and commanded them all to expel their individual evil into the darkness. They did so, and from then on, Azarath was seemingly freed from the corruptions of our first home._

 _But unknown to us, this evil failed to properly dissipate after being disposed of. Unbeknownst to the first dwellers of Azarath, our fiercest opponent on Earth, an abominable cult that calls itself today the 'Church of Blood', sought out this expelled evil in a mad bid to strengthen their twisted spiritual powers. Through their despicable wills, especially that of their leader, a man called 'Brother Blood', a title that would be passed on to each of his successors, the evil that had been purged through the Great Door was made to coalesce into a single being through the power of an insidious ritual. This ritual forcibly birthed out of this mass of negative emotions a massive demon that would come to call itself 'Trigon', a monstrosity that would inspire terror into hundreds of worlds as the centuries went on._

 _To this day, the wretched Church of Blood still worships Trigon, offering him human sacrifices and longing to serve as his willing assistants in the destruction of life, along with all the goodness that we Azarathians cherish. Without doubt, the Church aims to use Trigon to wipe out our home. It is our duty, for the sake of Azarath and the Earth as well, to prevent that wicked design from ever coming to fruition; it is a cold fact that not even our combined powers could be enough to stop Trigon if he ever managed to appear here within our realm, for he is a being born solely from human hatred, an emotion that has been responsible for multiple wars and the genocide of many human minorities. Let us therefore always be vigilant, so that this cataclysmic tragedy may be prevented."_

Robin shuddered as he finished reading the text.

 _"That's right…when Trigon showed up on Earth those years ago, the Earth was completely destroyed. That explains why I saw what I did in that nightmare! Trigon must've destroyed this place too!"_

 _"But, if that's the case…if he had to be summoned here like he was back on Earth…who called him here to Azarath? I don't understand. If the people here despised and feared Trigon, why would they let him show up and destroy their world? Doesn't that mean that one of them intentionally summoned him? But who would…"_

His thoughts were interrupted by banging on the metal door behind him. Robin whirled about and shoved his hand into the ammo slot of his belt, only to find it empty. In the heat of fighting, he had already used up the 2 boxes of ammo that he had brought with him.

 _"Crap! What the hell do I do?! I'm trapped in here now! I try to go out there, those things will shred me!"_

He stood there, panting and sweating in terror, when he saw the faintest flicker of a white robe out of the corner of his eye. Robin turned, but there was nobody else in the room with him. Instead, on the adjacent table, 3 boxes of gun ammunition covered in a slowly fading white glow lay neatly stacked next to 2 notes. Robin ran up to the table and quickly gazed over the notes, one of which was written in the same elegant blue script seen on the entrance to the Path of Reflection.

 _"Our home was once the haven of peace, where war and violence never reached._

 _But as you have seen, Azarath has now become the embodiment of everything our forebearers despised._

 _For the sake of that which you long for, the fight is inevitable._

 _And for that, you will not be left without hope._

 _Take these, and fight on._

 _Your truth is so close, so near._

 _Journey into the pit, face the pain that lurks there in the shadows, and the truth will set you free."_

Robin gratefully reloaded his gun with one of the boxes, and stuffed the other two into his belt, as he read the other note. This one looked too similar to the text on Trigon, but instead of that monstrous red giant, the creature depicted looked almost like a bat, with massive black wings covering up most of its body as it crawled around on clawed feet and hands.

 **"The Loneliness Demon"**

 _"Just as Trigon was born from the expelled evil of our predecessors, multiple other demons have been born from the darkest emotions of humans still wandering the Earth. One such demon, detailed in the drawing to the right, is born as a manifestation of a human's intense self-loathing and agony. Fighting this demon in particular is a dangerous operation that should never be taken lightly. It uses its iron-like wings as defense, and nothing man-made or magical seems to be able to dent this shield. In order to land a true hit, multiple attacks must be made upon the wings, in order to provoke it into showing its face. Beware, for the few individuals who have faced this monstrosity refuse to recount this demon's twisted features. Should the reader of this text ever be forced to face it, remember to land a critical strike to its exposed chest, before it can maim with its claws and teeth."_

After gazing at the description of the demon, doing his best to memorize the details, Robin readied his gun and walked to the door, preparing to reenter the battle.

 _"That white robe I saw…was that the women from the dream? Was that…Raven?"_

He cocked his pistol and yanked the door open, beholding the rest of the mob of demons leering at him. Robin shouted a war cry and downed several of the twisted children with expertly timed headshots, and even managed to take down one of the larger monsters too. As he flew like a whirlwind down the hall and towards the basement, he reloaded his gun and emptied more bullets into the shocked demons, who had apparently expected an easier fight.

When he had put enough distance between himself and the crowd, Robin slowed his pace down and walked up to what used to be the stairs to the lower level of the school. In its place was a massive, yawning pit with a rusted ladder leading down into the unknowable darkness. Robin carefully put his gun away and lowered himself onto the first rungs, taking deep breathes in an attempt to calm his nerves.

About halfway through the journey to the bottom, his flashlight began to flicker rapidly, until it suddenly went out. Robin cursed and shook it in a desperate attempt to restart it, but to no avail. He had nothing to guide him now, only instincts. He pocketed the useless flashlight and cautiously continued his decent.

After what seemed like hours, Robin felt his feet finally touch firm ground, and he let go of the rungs with relief. He felt the walls around him with his hand, and found that somehow, the hall he was in only went one way. The wall to his immediate left was nothing but a dead end, giving him no choice but to go on down the right towards whatever aberration lay in wait.

Robin slowly journeyed through the darkness, breathing slowly and gripping his gun with an iron grip. He only had one cartridge left, and he knew that if he didn't use it carefully, as the note warned, he could meet a gruesome fate at the hands of this creature.

His feet finally began to hit steps, and Robin slowly ascended them, vaguely able to make out shapes in the darkness around him. What looked like the outline of a massive pillar loomed several feet in front of him. After a minute of walking on the steps, his feet found even ground once more, and Robin heard what sounded like a jail cell door clanging shut behind him, the noise reverberating into the void.

Not even a moment after, the pillar in front of Robin seemed to light up with a grisly scarlet glow, revealing a tall, feminine and faceless corpse impaled with several rusted swords, all of which had those runes on them, with the same hellish glow. The light barely managed to illuminate the creature hiding behind the pillar, which was now shambling about on all fours.

Robin grimaced as he took in its form, which almost perfectly resembled the drawing in the note. The only differences he could see was a messy mane of greasy black hair tumbling in front of the creature, and its severely crippled appearance. The thing could be heard moaning lowly, and made no move to come near Robin. His curiosity peaked, and he tried to sneak up behind it, to get a closer look.

Only a few steps were made towards it when the creature waved a backhand at him with one of its clawed, gray hands, making Robin jump back in fright. Even then, the demon refused to go anywhere near him, as it tried to slowly escape whatever room they were in. All around him, Robin noted hundreds of cold, gray eyes glaring down at them, and he shuddered as he realized that the monsters up above had the same color to their orbs.

 _"There's no way I can survive all of these things attacking me!"_ Robin thought, terrified at the image of a horde of demons stoning him to death.

He looked at the wandering demon in front of him, and remembered what the note said about how to provoke it. Robin readied his gun, and began to shoot the massive wings covering its body. Each bullet made the monster flinch, but no other reaction could be seen. Robin gritted his teeth and emptied the last of his bullets onto the monster, and groaned when he heard his gun's final click.

The demon paused, and finally, slowly stood up on its crooked feet, its wings extending to several feet behind it. At that instant, the whole room seemed to erupt in flames as all above them, the demons were revealed by wide tongues of orange fire. The grey and hooded demons were standing in scarlet rows of seats, and they were now screeching down at the two of them, and hurling more chunks of metal down their direction. The corpse on the pillar began to bleed fresh blood from its wounds as its light and the light of the hellish runes on its blades suddenly blared, the different runes flashing in tune with the harsh words heard from above. Robin realized that he was back in the indoor coliseum, standing in a nightmarish version that lacked the antiquity of its former state.

All around him and the demon was a burning cage, trapping them and leaving them with no way out. Robin looked around him wildly as the demons attacked them with their stones, most of which clanged off of the cage's bars. Some of them managed to make it in, but for some reason, none of the demons were after Robin this time. Each and every single monster up above was aiming solely at the monster in front of him, which was shrieking in pain as some of the stones hit it, and covering its ears with its twisted hands as the demons continued to roar down at it in their guttural language.

Robin groped in his belt for something to help him, and then, he remembered what he had found in the hideaway room.

 _"Wait! I actually have one more bullet!"_

He seized the pink crystal bullet and held it in his palm, eager to see if it would fit into the gun's chamber. Before he could continue, the demon rapidly turned around and beheld him, freezing up in what seemed to be shock as it took Robin in with pale, grey eyes lacking irises and weeping tears of crimson blood. Robin quaked under its vision as he took in the monster's fully illuminated appearance, a mouth full of sharp teeth, greasy black hair tumbling down past its bony shoulders, and overall, a mottled grey body.

The thing took shambling steps towards Robin, its hands extended in what looked like a plea as the rocks continued to soar in past the bars. Though its huge wings managed to deflect most of them, some of them landed accurately, nearly knocking it off of its feet. The demon looked straight at Robin the entire time and roared at him over and over again. Robin stood paralyzed with fear as it drew closer. He thought in the back of his mind that this thing was trying to communicate something to him, but he was too terrified to dwell on the notion.

The flames made the rhodochrosite in his hand gleam, and it caught the demon's attention. It gawked at the piece in Robin's hand, and he watched as its whole body quivered with anxious desire, its wings shivering and its claws reaching out as far as they could in longing. Without missing a beat, it looked back at Robin, roaring much faster now, and placing its gnarled hands in a strange gesture just under the middle of its chest as it continued to walk towards Robin.

He made himself remember the note again, as he tried to comprehend what this thing wanted.

 _"Should the reader of this text ever be forced to face it, remember to land a critical strike to its exposed chest, before it can maim with its claws and teeth."_

A new kind of dread began to wash over Robin as he also recalled what the note in the hideaway room had said about the crystal.

 _"Because of its beautiful pink color and its association with love, Rhodochrosite is thought to be connected to one's Heart Chakra."_

 _"The Heart…Chakra…"_

All of the information that he had gleaned from his first steps into the school, along with what this thing had to truly be, and with what it clearly wanted him to do finally fell into place in his mind. His terror quickly changed into sympathetic horror at what he now knew, that this thing, despite its appearance, was completely innocent, and it wanted him to end its pain. Robin began to hyperventilate as tears began to bud up in his eyes. The demon registered this, and gave Robin a slow, painful nod of affirmation. The boy shook his head rapidly, and barely managed to speak to the entity.

"No! No! Please, there has to be another way! Please, you deserve so much better than this!"

The demon shook its head in answer and roared back at Robin even louder, its voice starting to reach a wailing higher pitch, sounding much less like a roaring beast, and more like the girl Robin had heard cry out in agony back in the classroom. Robin, still struggling to breath, barely managed to load the gemstone bullet into his gun, the rhodochrosite fitting perfectly. He slowly raised it so that it was aimed perfectly between the demon's hands.

As his tears clouded his vision, Robin saw the monster flicker into her form for the barest of instants, and he saw the girl clutching at her chest, weeping profusely and screaming her plea as the demons above them menacingly raised their stones all together, preparing to deal their death blow to the severely injured creature.

 **"KILL ME!"**

Robin cried out in pain and pulled the trigger, feeling the gun jerk in his hand as the gem flew and landed a true blow, right where the entity had hoped it would land. Its gaze softened as the prayer horn blared once more, sounding somehow melancholic in its baleful note. The demons up above froze in place, and began to disappear as a thick darkness began to fall upon them from above. The flames around the demons slowly faded away, as did the flames surrounding the cage that Robin and the entity were trapped in.

Out of the corner of his eye, Robin saw the blood pouring from the corpse's wounds cease flowing, as the runes' light and the glow of the corpse slowly began to fade away with everything else. The demon lowered its head, staring at the wound in its chest where the bullet had struck, and let itself relax, a smile creasing its visage as its wings drooped to the ground. Robin watched, still sobbing as his tears spilled over his cheeks, as it tenderly laid its hands over the bullet mark.

Just as the descending darkness completely covered the scene, Robin heard it let out a long-winded sigh of relief that echoed around the room. At last, it too faded away into the darkness, as the prayer horn slowly disappeared with it, leaving Robin alone, shaking and weeping.

All around him was a shapeless void, with no light to offer guidance. Robin collapsed onto his knees, wiped out and broken from the knowledge that he had gained.

 _"This whole time…all this time, Raven wanted to die this badly…and I had no idea…I feel like a horrible friend."_

His grieving thoughts were interrupted when he saw, to his shock, a gentle white light manifest in nearly the exact same spot where the demon had previously been. Robin gawked as he recognized the robed woman from the dream appearing in the darkness, still turned away from him. He gulped and shakily extended a hand in her direction, about to call out Raven's name. Just as he tried to speak, she turned around to face him.

The woman in front of Robin looked stern and austere, as she calmly held his gaze without flinching. Robin took in the bangs of purple hair framing her face, along with the ruby stone set in the middle of her forehead, and he knew that he was seeing what could've been an older doppelganger of his missing friend.

As the pedestal and steps finally manifested around him, the woman faded out of sight, leaving Robin further confused. He barely registered a small, golden light gleaming on the pedestal as he tried to process what he had just seen.

 _"That's not Raven..."_ he thought, as he advanced towards the pedestal. _"But she looks so much like her. And that has to be the woman that I chased in the dream. Who is she?"_

He gazed at the pedestal, where a large chunk of a golden stone lay. Upon closer inspection, the stone was covered with Azarathian runes, and was adorned with the image of an eagle in midflight. Robin took it, and saw how easily its light illuminated his surroundings.

 _"Screw the flashlight, this works much better."_

After a few minutes of wandering through the dark halls of the once more empty school, Robin finally left the building, and back into the fog. The darkness had been lifted over the streets of Azarath, replaced with the swirling mist and fog. Robin had hardly taken a few steps away from the school's front entrance when his communicator watch blared into life.

"Robin!" Beast Boy shouted at him. "Dude, we've been trying to reach you for more than an hour! Why the hell didn't you respond?!"

Robin looked down at his watch in confusion and asked Beast Boy "Beast, what are you talking about? Nobody's contacted me."

The screen beeped as Cyborg, huffing and puffing, made his entrance.

"Well, that confirms my theory. Guys, it looks like that darkness cut off our communications somehow."

With another beep, Starfire appeared on the screen, looking shaken and stressed.

"Indeed, that seems to be a likely answer to our inability to talk with each other."

Robin shrugged, and asked them "Did you guys manage to find your destinations? I had to go through a school to find my 'piece of truth'…which is this thing, apparently."

He showed them the golden hunk, and the three of them made "Ooo" noises in response.

"Nice" Beast Boy muttered. "Um, no, I've had no luck. I keep going north, but none of these buildings stick out to me. Oh, and speaking of…uh, while we tried to reach you, all 3 of us were wandering around in some of those skyscrapers dotting this place. When we heard that air horn thing go off, the doors locked themselves, and we couldn't get out. But boy, we could here this awful screaming and roaring in the distance, and nobody knows what it could be."

Robin had to resist the urge to shudder as he remembered the burning, screaming crowd of humans in his nightmare.

"I can't find my place either" Cyborg told them. "I don't have a damn clue what I'm supposed to be looking for, either. 'A place of contradictions'? That could be anything!"

They heard Starfire mumble something awkwardly, and the three boys paused to let her speak.

"Um, it would seem that I've arrived at my destination."

Robin watched Starfire's part of the screen highlight what looked like the entrance to a graveyard, with what seemed to be a wrought iron gate standing open. In the distance was a small gray tomb-looking building.

"Good luck, Starfire. I'm going to take a look around this place, see if I can find any more information. You two keep looking."

Cyborg and Beast Boy both replied "Roger", and the screen winked out, leaving Robin alone once more.

* * *

Starfire looked up at the tomb ahead of here, and grimaced.

 _"I would rather not have to investigate a place full of dead people…but if it's for Raven's sake, then I shall gladly proceed."_

She proceeded into the fog, hoping that nothing especially horrific awaited her.


	4. Tomb of Forgotten Memories

Starfire hesitantly walked through the gate and into the greenery in front of her, looking around her warily for any signs of life. Nothing could be seen besides the swirling fog, dancing snow and the grey building in front of her. A stone fountain lay to her left, empty and barren. A small patch of flowers lay to the immediate right of the building's entrance, a cluster of large blue bulbs that seemed to be Chinese bellflowers. Behind her, two metal braziers marked the entrance to the area.

" _This place is so gloomy..."_ Starfire thought as she floated towards the door in front of her.

When she got to the door, she saw that it was a silver door with three large circular indents stamped in it. One of them was a dark blue, the other a light green, and the third a dulled yellow. On top of the indents was a message written in the same elegant, glowing blue scrawl from before:

 **The Three Wise Women**

" _Against the raging darkness stood three powerful women, three lighthouses in the Void. To the lost and weary they beckoned with open arms, offering protection from the ravages of the night, and freedom from all earthly troubles. Here in the shelters of sacred ground they lie, their bodies asleep as their spirits roam free in the Light beyond this world. The one who led her entourage through the death of winter, the one who planted seeds of peace during the quiet spring, and the one who brought forth the light of summer."_

Starfire ran her hand over the indents as she pondered what the message meant.

" _This must be some sort of a clue as to how the door will be opened. Surely I must find the things that fit into these slots!"_

She glanced again at the epitaph, and scrambled her mind in an attempt to decipher it.

" _Perhaps the colors and the seasons go together? Let's see…blue for winter…green for spring…and yellow for summer?"_

" _Wonderful!...but where am I supposed to find these objects? Surely I do not have to scour this whole city…"_

After a moment's thought, Starfire turned to the patch of flowers and squinted at them with curiosity.

" _I wonder…if flowers bloom in spring…does that mean…?"_

She flew to the patch, and knelt, peeking through the green stems. It didn't take her long to spot the disc cleverly hidden among the foliage, its color perfectly matching the shade of the green indent. Starfire grabbed it, flew back to the door and placed it into its spot, the disc clicking as it fit perfectly.

After scanning the grounds quickly, Starfire set her eyes on the fountain, doing her best to be logical about where the other two discs would be.

" _Winter is blue…water is blue…so therefore…"_

An inspection of the old fountain yielded the blue disc, wedged between a crack in the grayed stone. It, too, fit perfectly into the blue indentation.

Starfire glanced at the torches, the only likely place for the last disc, and flew up to them, rummaging through the old ashes. After scouring the second brazier, she finally found the third and final disc.

When the last disc was placed into its slot, a loud clank could be heard behind the door. Starfire grabbed the edge and slid it open with a grunt, revealing a long, seemingly endless gray staircase descending into yawning darkness. She noticed what looked like a strange glyph glowing idly on a small ledge near the entrance, lying next to a note.

Just as Starfire was about to enter the building, without any warning, the gray sky all around her rapidly plunged into darkness, the feeble light disappearing in a matter of seconds. She shuddered, knowing what was meant to happen soon after.

She took her first steps into the building, and jumped in fright when she heard the door slam shut behind her.

" _This is not good! And where am I? Surely I am not about to descend…into a tomb?"_

The yellow light to her right caught her eye again, and Starfire turned to it, her curiosity momentarily pausing her fear. She picked up the glyph, inspecting it closely. It was made of a dark blue stone, with an intricate yellow rune inscribed on it. The light easily extended a foot into the darkness, illuminating the shadows around her and highlighting the note next to it.

 **Glyph of Understanding**

" _Even for us who dwell in Azarath, death can darken our hearts, and cloud our minds with depression, loneliness, and above all, the question of why we must die at all. And so, as a free gift from those of us who guard these sacred halls, we offer this talisman, engraved with the Azarathian glyph that represents understanding. This talisman is made of the precious gemstone Lapis Lazuli, which we have long hailed as a stone that generates perfect clarity towards all matters, destroying the fog of the mind on that which clouds our perception. This stone also aids us in better communicating with one another, fostering understanding and peace, especially among the brokenhearted and those enraged by the hurts of the past. For the sake of this communication, along with giving light to these halls, yellow was the color chosen to inscribe this beloved glyph."_

Starfire breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for the strange gift. She continued her descent into the darkness, gracefully taking each step with care.

After what seemed to be a lifetime, Starfire finally found even footing, and walked forward into what seemed to be the first level of a catacomb. Surrounding her and rising into the darkness were rows slots with robed bodies stored carefully. A gentle perfume of something floral hung in the air, no doubt to dispel the stench of death. On top of each slot were the strange Azarathian runes, glowing in that same soft blue as before, and declaring the names of the deceased. Starfire let the light of the talisman shine on them all, and realized that the language of the city was one that she had studied long ago, an obscure language vaguely mentioned in the old tomes of Tamaran's immense libraries.

She murmured the names of the deceased on her lips, still shocked that she could understand the odd runes. With each step that she took further into the tomb, the rows continued on, until she came to a towering silver door, barred and locked by a massive metal beam lying across. Larger runes were emblazoned on the doors, and Starfire stood in concentration, attempting to translate the message.

" _Here lies the founder of our paradise, the First Azar, the woman who escorted hundreds away from the war-torn Earth, and into this realm of new beginnings, her greatest discovery."_

Starfire gazed up at the runes and bowed her head in respect, pausing for a moment to honor the founder of Azarath. After allowing herself to give silent honor for a few moments, Starfire continued down the hall, which was now veering off into the right, where she could see another set of stairs descending even further into the darkness. On the stone wall next to the stairs were another set of runes, this time, as Starfire mentally translated, marking the floor below.

" _To the second floor of the Ancient Catacomb, wherein lies the bodies of our beloved Second Azar, and all those who followed her into the world beyond."_

The descent to the lower level ended at another massive door, this one made out of bronze. Starfire hesitantly pushed it open, and walked out onto the second floor.

* * *

Robin was walking around the city, hoping to find more clues about what was happening. His only light in the surrounding void was the golden chunk of stone in his hand, which was still glowing with a radiant light. The snow continued to dance around him, disappearing the instant it hit the ground. As he walked further into the center of the city, the school far behind him, the scenery began to turn nightmarish once more.

Dotting the sides of the street were numerous corpses, all burnt to a crisp, and several with mutilated limbs. Unlike the corpse from the nightmare, these bodies had all retained their faces, which were permanently warped into silent screams of utmost horror. Robin had to fight his rising nausea has he glanced at the corpses, his mind already filling in the blanks about what had happened to them.

" _Are these the citizens of Azarath?"_ he wondered, shuddering as he tried to keep walking.

The only thing that stopped him from believing that was that all of the corpses were clearly male, not a single woman or child among the charred bodies. On top of that, what little remained of their robes were the same scarlet color as the ones worn by the men whom he had seen abduct Raven merely hours ago.

His thoughts were interrupted by another flash of white in the corner of his eye. Robin whirled to his right to see the robed woman bolting down the street, her robe whirling about her feet. He gave chase desperately, aching to get answers at last.

He chased her to the steps of a circular building at the end of the lane, a building that was even more Grecian in style than the school, with numerous white pillars surrounding the exterior and artwork of robed figures in study plastered on the top arch. The woman ran up to the very top step of the building, before she whirled around, and froze Robin in place with her gaze.

The woman's eyes, dark blue and cold as ice, were glaring down at Robin with a severity that completely stopped him from following her. Just as she had in the bowels of the school, she rapidly faded away into thin air, to Robin's chagrin.

"Wait!" he shouted pointlessly, as she was now gone from sight, "I need to talk to you!"

When it was clear to him that she wouldn't be coming back, Robin huffed and ascended the steps, and walked up to the door of the building. The door was made of gold, and that same praying woman was etched into it, looking exactly like the statue in the garden of the school. After staring at the door for a few seconds, Robin pushed the doors open and walked inside.

It appeared that he had walked into a massive library, as humongous bookcases lined the walls of the building, with numerous tables spread about the middle. Stairs could be seen winding around the walls, leading up to upper levels out of sight within the inner darkness. The largest table in the middle of the room had one scroll on it, unfurled and ready to read. Robin walked up to it and shown the light of his stone over it, enabling him to read the English script.

 **Angela Roth**

" _In the year 1991, in the cold winter, a few of our missionaries discovered a weakened woman hidden in one of the alleyways of New York City, on the verge of death from overconsumption of what seemed to be sleeping pills. The woman was evidently pregnant, and from within the womb, those sent sensed the ancient evil essence of Trigon himself. Despite their misgivings, or rather, out of desperation to help the dying woman, they took her back to the City, to the Temple to ask the third Azar what to do._

 _Azar clearly sensed Trigon's evil within the woman, who told us that her name was 'Angela Roth'. She ultimately decided to have the stray woman stay here in our realm, where she would give birth to a daughter. Azar herself renamed the poor woman 'Arella', a name in our language that means 'Messenger Angel'. To this day, none of us have been able to decipher why our leader bestowed such a wondrous name on the bearer of a demon-spawned child. However, nobody dared to challenge Azar's authority on the matter._

 _Arella would quickly become one of our most devout and humble citizens, doing everything she could to aid us in our desire to rid the Earth of its pain and hatred. Many of us have secretly wondered if, judging by the nature of her daughter's conception, she has some past connection to the Church of Blood, which still continues to worship that vile creature."_

"Arella…" Robin whispered, a memory throbbing in the back of his mind.

Then, he recalled the moment in Raven's room when the leader of her abductors, the one with the skull paint, had spat that word at him when Robin had stumbled in on their deed. At the time, Robin had thought nothing of it, but now, pieces of the puzzle were coming together.

" _That's the woman. That's her. And I'm positive that she's the one who sent that dove, who brought us here. But…why? And is she…?"_

A loud thud barely a foot behind him nearly gave Robin a heart attack, as he jumped a bit and spun around. Another scroll had landed just behind him, unfurling and coming to a stop at his feet. As he tried to take deep breathes to calm himself down, he bent down and shone his light over the scroll, likewise written completely in English.

 **Violent Incident in City Center**

" _During one of this day's prayer sessions, the entirety of Azarath came close to witnessing a murder._

 _Arella, our newest addition, attempted to strangle Joach, one of the school's teachers, to death._

 _Before she attacked him, Arella cornered him and accused him, in front of the mass, of allowing her daughter to be tormented physically and emotionally by her fellow students, all while he stood by and laughed. Joach treated Arella with scorn, and mocked both the woman and her daughter. The man made no attempt of denying his vile actions, and arrogantly boasted, to Arella's face, what he did to the girl. He made the near-fatal choice of calling her 'Trigon's whore', and referring to her daughter in the same malicious manner._

 _Before any of us could react, Arella lunged at him, caught him by surprise, and pinned him to the ground. It seems that she learned vicious self-defense techniques during her time surviving in the slums of Earth. Even though Joach was by all means stronger than her, he was unable to escape her iron grip. If not for Azar's intervention, it is certain that Joach would have perished at Arella's hands._

 _After this incident, the truth of what had happened to Arella's daughter, along with Joach's role in it, was completely revealed to Azar, who summarily banished him from the school, and took in the tormented girl as her own pupil, to live in safety and hiding in the Temple itself. As for the students responsible for this girl's torment, they, along with the parents who did nothing to stop their children, were all forced to give Arella and her daughter what seemed to be a humiliating apology; it was too obvious that for many of them, it was an apology forced through gritted teeth._

 _As for Arella, the enigmatic woman chose to use this event as a sinister warning against the many Azarathians whom she knew despised her and her daughter. After seeing what this wayward woman was capable of doing with just her physical power alone, it would have been utter folly for any Azarathian to make her an enemy._

 _And naturally, for those of us who were already paranoid about who Arella had consorted with, a new fear was stirred in our hearts. If this woman alone was capable of such a murderous rage, what would her daughter, sired by the embodiment of our ancestors' expelled hatred, be capable of unleashing with her own fury?"_

Robin's heart began to pound with terror again, as he reeled back away from the scroll, his thoughts scrambling. The blackened corpses came back to mind as he attempted to cohere what he had just read.

" _This woman tried to kill that bastard! Like hell would I blame her for trying. But still, that's disturbing."_

" _Is she somehow responsible for the carnage I've seen? And if I'm right about all of this…if these notes are really telling me what I'm thinking…doesn't that make Arella-"_

The door in front of him was suddenly locked with a loud, reverberating clang that echoed throughout the library. Robin gawked at the door, and let his terrified expression drift up to the ceiling, as he waited for the inevitable prayer horn to resound once more.

* * *

The second floor of the catacombs looked just like the first, except the stones seemed to be slightly fresher in appearance. Starfire carefully walked past the slots in the walls, looking around her for anything out of the ordinary.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden apparition of a group of white robed men and women carrying a large bundle of midnight blue cloth on their shoulders. The group was trudging slowly towards the end of the hall, with a clear demeanor of grief, and all of them weeping bitterly. Starfire watched them process, wondering in confusion where they had come from, and whether or not they could tell she was behind them. She walked up to them slowly, as a member of the throng began to shout violently.

"Do you all see what Joach was saying?" the man snarled at the rest of the robed figures, who froze up in alarm as he ranted. "Do you see what happens when you allow a demon-spawned brat to exist in our midst?! Our leader died by that girl's curse!"

Another figure, this one a woman, glared at the man and told him "Don't be ridiculous! How could a mere girl curse the third Azar, the granddaughter of Azarath's founder, to death? Our leader was far more powerful than that child could ever hope to be. And as you knew very well, the third Azar was getting on in age. It was only a matter of time before this happened."

The man spat back "Look at you, defending Trigon's whelp!"

"Calm down, man!" another figure said, a fellow who looked especially weary. "Your spiteful words can't hope to bring her back."

"Like I care! Do you seriously think that me and the rest of Azarath will remain silent, knowing that the demon's mother is now our leader?"

The woman sighed in derision and told him "It is our duty, as well as yours, to respect Azar's wish. It was by her decree that Arella was made the fourth Azar, you know that. To defy that would be utter treason and folly."

"So what?! Azar could've chosen somebody else!"

"Azar had no daughter to pass the role on hereditably. As for Arella, there must have been a special reason why our leader chose that poor, ostracized woman."

"Poor? That wretch nearly killed Joach! That wench slept with our greatest enemy, and birthed his spawn here within the city! How can you all just ignore that?"

The woman, the exhausted fellow and the rest of the group silenced the raging figure with cold glares.

The last words that Starfire heard as the entourage disappeared from sight was the woman saying softly but firmly "Because, as the original Azar willed, the wise majority of us refuse to let hate and fear rule our hearts, unlike yours and Joach's."

Starfire was one more left alone in the dark hallway, shaken and further confused by what she had just witnessed.

" _These people…they were not talking about Raven…were they?"_

She made herself continue walking down the corridor, and she eventually found herself facing another massive silver door, this one marked as the tomb of the second Azar.

" _Here lies the second Azar, who successfully followed in her mother's footsteps as a loving leader who continued to shape Azarath and the Earth with her humble knowledge."_

Starfire turned to the right, to see another set of stairs spiraling ever further into the pit. Next to the stairs were more runes, which she carefully read, the translation process becoming easier for her.

" _To the third floor of the Ancient Catacomb, wherein lies the bodies of our beloved Third Azar, and all those who followed her into the world beyond."_

Just as she finished reading the Azarathian runes, the prayer horn of Azarath suddenly roared into life, echoing down into the catacombs with a terrible fury. Starfire stood quaking as the horrid sound rose and fell quicker than before, shaking the walks around her with its fury.

It took her almost a minute to calm down, and continue walking towards the final level of the catacombs. The darkness around her began to press down harder, and the yellow light of her talisman barely managed to illuminate the steps in front of her. As Starfire neared the landing, an ugly red light could be seen in the shadows up ahead. The light was coming from under the door blocking the entrance to the third level, and Starfire knew that something hellish awaited her once she dared to open it.

The prayer horn began to fade away as Starfire drew closer to the door, and with it, the scarlet light began to brighten menacingly. A horrid stench of rotting flesh was seeping through the cracks of the door, making Starfire gag. She heard the prayer horn disappear completely, leaving behind a sinister echo as she reached for the door handle.


	5. My Fault, My Greatest Fault!

Starfire screamed in horror as she beheld a hall filled with roaring scarlet flames that were consuming everything in sight. Within the flames, shrieking in agony and wailing Raven's name like Robin had described from his nightmare, were more of the wraiths. All of the slots lining the third hall were empty, and it seemed that the hall's residents had been ripped from their slumber by the hell that had been unleashed. Blood was pouring out of the vacant slots and onto the floor, combining with the acrid stench of burning flesh and making Starfire gag.

She flew as fast as she could between the flames and the burning humans, noting that men, women and children were all flailing about madly as inner fires consumed them mercilessly. As Starfire flew closer to the end of the hall, she barely reacted in time to avoid a purple burst of energy sent zooming into her path.

With a yelp of terror, she landed on the ground as several tall, demonic men and women black robes ran at her, bellowing something guttural that not even she could understand. The monsters were pointing at her and waving their hands at the burning wraiths, and after a moment of confusion, Starfire understood what they were implying.

"No!" she screamed them, paralyzed with horror. "I did not do this, I swear! I am innocent!"

They all roared at her in response began charging more purple orbs. Starfire put up her hands in self-defense, and accidentally let lose a blast of her own emerald energy, that sent her assailants crashing harshly against the burning walls, where they remained limp and evidently lifeless.

The Tamaranian girl gazed in horror at the casualties she had wrought, and whispered madly to herself "This is not happening…this is not happening! Even if they were not human, I just…"

She did her best to continue to zoom down the hall, desperately looking for a way out. With the screams of the burning humans behind her, Starfire knew that she would be trapped if she couldn't escape soon. All she could see at the end of the hall was another massive door, made of some sort of blackened metal, and with harsh vermillion runes engraved on it.

" _Here lies the Third Azar, deceived into believing that the woman she so graciously offered sanctuary to, and the half-demon whelp that she unleashed in the sacred city of Azarath, would not bring forth the terror and destruction that her people so deeply feared."_

There was no bar preventing this door from being budged, and when Starfire tried to open it, it swung open with an ominous creak, a pitch-black room lying just beyond. She quickly went inside and slammed the door behind her, hoping that the poor creatures down the corridor wouldn't try to come after her.

Her moment of peace was shattered when the whole room erupted into more scarlet flames, the fire licking up all the walls and corners. A screeching clang was heard behind her as the massive door locked itself. At the far end of the room, a massive grey figure erupted from the flames, a monstrous female figure with billowing gray hair, a tattered white robe, a mouth filled with nasty looking fangs, and two hate-filled pale eyes.

The thing roared at Starfire, and, using its massive ghostly hands, sent multiple bullets of purple energy zooming her way. Starfire was barely able to evade the attacks as she desperately held on to her talisman, not knowing what sort of safety it could provide. Running around the room was barely enough to avoid the monstrous woman's attacks, the purple energy exploding everywhere.

Starfire looked the thing in the eyes and asked her pleadingly "Please, why are you so angry? Surely you do not blame me for what is happening here!"

Just as she finished speaking those words, the woman bellowed at her again, and pointed behind her. Starfire whirled around and saw that an illusion had somehow spawned out of the fires. She recoiled as she took the horrible image in.

The fire had produced what looked like a hologram of sorts, a shimmering picture of several Azarathian men, women and children burning up in the scarlet flames, all of them with disturbing expressions of agony on their faces. A barely audible collective shriek of pain could be heard emanating from the image. The group's arms were all pointed upwards towards the figure looming over them, covered in a blood-red cloak.

Starfire recoiled when she recognized her teammate Raven towering over the screaming people, a cold sneer on her lips and two pairs of glowing, jagged red eyes glaring down at the Azarathians.

The monstrous woman behind her was sneering satisfactorily when Starfire whirled around to face her again.

"No!" Starfire pleaded with her, "I know my friend far better, she would never do anything like that! That image has to be a lie!"

In response, the woman bellowed at her and sent another wave of violet energy crashing towards her. Starfire dodged it, and at last, her own fury boiled over.

"ENOUGH!"

She let out a massive nova of emerald energy that slightly knocked back the raging monster, who was now stunned with surprise. Starfire glared up at her with livid, glowing eyes as her anger continued to soar.

"I did not journey into the depths of this dark place to argue with you! I came here to discover the truth of this place, and I will not allow a wretch like you to interfere!"

The woman growled at her, but Starfire was far too over the edge to be afraid any longer.

"If you will not listen to me, then I will make you understand!"

Starfire raised the blue talisman high into the air and shouted "Behold, understanding!", hoping for a miracle to save her.

For several moments, nothing happened, and the monster's sneer quickly returned. Then, to their mutual shock, the talisman began to reverberate as a powerful white light began to cover it, and it rapidly rose into the air, its light filling the tomb to the brim.

Starfire watched the monstrous woman watch the talisman in confusion as it suddenly sailed right into the shimmering image, coming to a rest within the disturbing image of Raven. When it disappeared within Raven's form, the white light rippled out, disintegrating the image, and replacing it with something equally frightening.

Where Raven had stood, a man in the same scarlet robe, with a white skull painted over his hollowed face, was now towering over the screaming Azarathians, wearing a horrible leer. Dark laughter could now be heard mixing in with the people's screams, and Starfire shuddered as she recognized the man who had seriously wounded Robin with one easy attack.

Starfire turned to the woman, and saw that her enemy was gawking at the shimmering image, a look of horrible recognition replacing her fury. To Starfire's shock, the prayer horn began to resound once more, rising and falling as the room was slowly covered in darkness. The flames, the image and the woman collectively began to disappear as the monster pointed a gnarled finger at the man in the fire, seething hatred contorting her hideous features.

" **BLOOD!"** Starfire heard the woman roar as the darkness finally overtook the room, leaving her shrouded and shaken. The prayer horn disappeared as the room became covered completely.

The shadows were tempered by the appearance of a small, golden light glowing near where the monstrous woman had appeared. Starfire approached it, and beheld a chunk of golden stone resting in the hands of a statue that vaguely resembled the enemy that had attacked her so viciously. The statue, resembling a woman covered in a white robe and extending her hands in prayer, stood guard over a beautiful silver coffin, no doubt containing the remains of the third Azar.

Starfire took the stone in her hand, feeling a residual warmth coming out of it. Inscribed on the stone were a few Azarathian runes, and the image of a maned, roaring lion. She jumped a bit when she heard the door behind her emit a resounding clang, and when she went to inspect it, she found that it was now unlocked.

When she pushed the door open, Starfire could see that the flames, robed demons and burning people had all disappeared, leaving her alone in the darkness of the catacombs once more.

She walked slowly towards the upper levels, as she pondered all that she had seen.

" _How peculiar. 'Blood' is that man's name? And was that woman…the third Azar? Or just another awful fiend? And why was Raven initially the one sneering at those poor burning people? That was nothing like I have ever seen from her!"_

All around her, it was evident that the third level of the catacomb was the newest addition, the stones that comprised it looking nearly brand new.

" _Based on that weird procession I saw…this floor was probably only made about 10 years ago, in comparison to the floors above. How odd. If there was a fourth Azar, as they said, I wonder why another floor was not added here too?"_

"… _Was Azarath destroyed after the fourth Azar was named?"_

After a slow journey upwards, Starfire finally walked out into the foggy landscape, glad to be free from the choking shadows below. As she made her way towards the city, her mind drifted to her teammates, and their progress finding their own "pieces of truth".

" _When will we be able to rescue Raven? I do not wish to reside much longer in a desolate, creepy place such as this."_


	6. Beyond the Door that Hides Revenge

The journey south took Cyborg past countless rows of the massive metal skyscrapers, with no unique buildings coming into sight initially. It took him far too long to come across a simple, small and square bronze building that was utterly dwarfed by the rest of the city. By the time he had finally managed to reach what he hoped was the destination marked for him by that weird poem, the darkness had once again fallen over Azarath, and Cyborg was doing his best to stay calm. White snow danced around him as the wind howled through the buildings around him, creating an unearthly hollow reverberating noise that only served to deepen the chilling atmosphere.

" _It's about damn time!"_ he thought with a huff, as he went up to the door and yanked it open.

Cyborg did his best to block out the images of the charred corpses that he had seen dotting the landscape around him during his journey towards the southern section of the city. He had made himself continue running, not interested in being paralyzed with horror when he wanted desperately to find Raven as soon as possible. The nightmare that Robin had described to the team back in their home was still stuck in the back of his mind, and Cyborg didn't want to dwell on the awful possibilities that such a dream provoked.

When he walked inside, he found what seemed to be a small warehouse, with shelves of odd construction tools lining numerous silver shelves, and plans spread out over the few tables in sight. The building appeared to be nothing more than one room, with a small set of stairs descending into a lower level and out of sight.

Cyborg turned on his shoulder light, and gazed around the room, not sure where he was supposed to begin looking. He approached the plans on the table just in front of him, and gawked at the creations written on the material.

" _Woah, how the hell did these people come up with this? This looks like the stuff Da Vinci planned all those centuries ago!"_

The plans seemed to be describing a number of odd projects, one of them that looked vaguely like angel wings. It seemed that that Azarathians had been attempting to discover a means for giving humans the ability to fly.

Around the room, similar plans were discovered, all containing strange creations that had been planned to give the Azarathians a powerful technological boost. Oddly, no weapon plans could be found, despite the affinity for metal materials that the now lost people had seemed to have.

" _Looks like the people here were nonviolent. I guess I can't blame them. They probably never planned on fighting wars, since that would contradict everything I've seen and heard so far."_

He looked around him, and decided to check out the lower level, hoping to find some sort of a clue on Raven's whereabouts, or the 'piece of truth' that he was supposed to find here. The descent downwards was rather short, and ended with Cyborg walking into a rather empty room with only one table in the middle. On the table were a few musty pieces of that odd parchment-like material, all of them covered in dust and looking ancient.

Cyborg gave the room a disappointed look, his hopes for a major clue fading away. He shone his light over the note, bored and not expecting to read anything useful.

 **The Voice of Azarath**

" _When the First Azar and her entourage came to this sacred place, they discovered rather quickly that the City has a life of its own. That is to say, Azarath, since the beginning of its existence, has, and always will be fully sentient._

 _During the start of our people's mission to save others from Earth's wars and horrors, this place willingly molded itself to suit our purposes. Within the first year of our arrival here, Azarath had created itself as a replica of the paradise that our forbearers had sought for so long. Towering buildings of precious metals soon rose high into the atmosphere of our home, all molded by Azarath's will. The First Azar merely offered up our people's deep wish for a beautiful, peaceful home where we would be able to congregate and build up our lives, and our City granted it to us freely._

 _In time, Azarath developed for itself a voice of sort, in order to 'communicate' with us, and to guide us in prayer for the people left behind on Earth. This 'voice' was what we now refer to as the prayer horn of Azarath. It is near impossible to recall when this place first created this sound, as not even the First Azar was able to remember it. What seems likely is that Azarath created it one day, after hearing our collective desire to gather together throughout the day in mass prayer sessions._

 _Many describe the prayer horn as a beautiful, high note that soothes the senses and calms our minds, in preparation for deep praying. There are some of us who have, at one point, described the sound as the City 'singing' to its people. None of us have ever found where the source of the horn is. That, too, is something that none of the Azars have ever discovered. The prayer horn was created from Azarath's will, just as the whole City was long ago."_

Cyborg finished reading the text and began to shudder violently as it all started to sink in. Since he had first heard Robin describe everything that had happened to him in that awful nightmare, the notion that somebody or something had been guiding his teammate around was not lost on him. The disturbing symbols that Robin had described to them, each of them appearing in rapid succession after the jagged scorch mark had been seen, made Cyborg wonder if there was a presence in his friend's dream that was attempting to speak symbolically to him.

The note only confirmed all of Cyborg's fearful thoughts.

" _This whole time, this place has been 'singing' to us?! That means that in Robin's nightmare, Azarath was…speaking to him? If that's true, then that has to mean that this place was the force guiding him and creating those awful symbols, not the woman he saw…what…"_

" _And that damn noise! That's this city's voice? But why does that 'voice' echo just before all Hell breaks loose here? Is it some sort of a desperate warning from Azarath itself to hide?"_

All around him, the prayer horn suddenly erupted into life once more, and Cyborg swore violently as he jumped back nearly a foot in fright. The awful noise seemed to be closing in on him from all directions, wailing without end.

"Crap, what do I do?! I don't have a damn clue what sort of nightmare I'm about to face! And I don't know where to go further from here! There aren't any more doors, and the only way out is up!" he sputtered, now in fear for his safety, as he knew that everything around him was likely to go through another horrific transformation like the city had twice already.

He looked around madly, hoping to find a quick answer to his turmoil. But of course, no doors could be seen. Cyborg raised his head to the ceiling, and let out a shout filled with terror and fury.

" **If you're really watching me, if you're really listening to me Azarath, help me out here!"**

After a moment of continued panic, he got a strange impulse to look at the floor under the table. Cyborg got on one knee and peered at the seemingly plain space in confusion, without any understanding why he felt the urge to look.

It only took him a few seconds to see that there was an even, almost invisible crack running along the ground under the table. Cyborg blinked slowly, and sighed softly, as he realized what he had to do.

 _"Good grief, this is way too much like the movies."_

The prayer horn blared louder, almost as if it was affirming his thoughts. Cyborg gritted his teeth, gripped at the crack, and managed with a grunt to lift up a massive slab of stone covering a dark set of stairs descending deep down into the ground. He slipped under the slab, walked a few steps down, and let it slam shut over him as he observed his position, the prayer horn still roaring through the walls.

At the end of the stairs was a black metal door, with nothing but pitch darkness seen under it. Cyborg gulped in fear as he slowly approached it, and he readied the arsenal of weapons cached in the machine parts of his body. He had no idea what sort of monstrosities he was about to face, and the last thing he wanted was to walk in to the void beyond unprepared.

 _"I'm coming for you, Raven. Hang tight, and don't be afraid! Your friends are almost there!"_

Cyborg gripped the door's handle tight, and twisted it open, with his desire to find his teammate the only motivation holding back the terror gripping at his heart.


	7. Dancing Shadows, Echoing Fear

With the frightening sound of the horn resounding from all directions, Robin panted heavily as he gripped his knees, exhausted after fleeing into the tower. As soon as the prayer horn had begun to roar again, he had chased the woman's white light into his current location, one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city. She had appeared darting around the corner of the street he had been crossing moments before the awful sound had erupted. He was desperate to get some sort of an answer from her regarding Raven, and Robin was aching too for the opportunity to confirm his theory over her identity.

He heard the door behind him lock with a resounding clang as the prayer horn dissipated, leaving Robin alone in the ominous darkness, his only companion the glowing stone in his hand. The inside of the tower had already become corroded with the blood colored rust that had become the trademark symbol of the city's nightmarish transformation. It was a tall but narrow building, with nothing besides a winding staircase situated around a pole climbing upwards decorating the interior.

" _She's up there, at the top of this tower, I'm certain of it!"_

Robin began his slow ascent towards the top of the tower, knowing that if he was able to access the roof, there stood the horrible possibility that he would finally be able to see what Azarath looked like after the prayer horn heralded the coming shift into chaos.

As he suspected, the stairs seemed to be endless, and he had no way of knowing how close he was to the other end. Multiple thoughts about the woman ran through his mind as he continued to journey upwards.

" _Without a doubt, this woman has to be Arella. Assuming that I'm right, she's also the same person that the one man with the skull paint hates so much. I still don't understand why he said her name when he saw me barge in on him and those other scumbags, but I just might find out soon."_

" _Even though she seems so cold, I don't get the sense that she's malicious, or another enemy. If anything, she seems even more silently concentrated and determined than Raven. She must have some sort of an idea where Raven is, and how we can find her. Right now, this woman's my only hope."_

After what seemed like an hour of climbing the winding steps, Robin saw by the light of his stone that he had reached the ceiling, where a circular slab of stone was covering the entrance to the roof. He pushed it off and over the top with a heave, and clambered outside into the sweltering scarlet heat.

All around him, Azarath was covered in a horrendous inferno, the sky the same flaming orange color from his nightmare. The tower he had escaped to was one of the few buildings not consumed by the flames covering the city. An acrid stench of blood and ash was filling his nostrils, and the screams of the burning humans was echoing from all corners.

On top of that awful noise, Robin shuddered as he registered a new sound: what sounded like animalistic roaring could be heard this time, and the image of the claw marks etched along the sides of the alleyway from his dream came back to his mind. Robin quivered in fear as he began to picture the creatures that had to be adding to the hellish cacophony.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her white glow, and he whirled around to face her, on edge and hoping that she wouldn't disappear this time. She was watching him silently, her white cloak billowing around her ankles as her expression stayed static and neutral. After several moments of the two of them watching each other, it became obvious that she wasn't about to fade away.

"I finally understand who you are." Robin walked towards her, pointing at her with his free hand. "How could I be so stupid? Why didn't your similar appearance register with me sooner? It should've dawned on me why you look so much like Raven!"

The woman continued to watch him with her stone cold expression, unblinking as he went on.

"I get it now. It was you that I chased in that nightmare. It was you that sent that dove that healed me, and opened the portal for us. You've been pulling the strings for us this whole time, and it's taken me too long to see that."

Robin stood only a foot away from her, looking at her with awe as he declared his finished insight.

"You're…you're Raven's mother. You're… **Arella**!"

In affirmation, the woman bowed her head in a slight inclination, her blue eyes watching him closely. She still said nothing, and after a pause, Robin desperately began to plea with her.

"Please, I'm begging you! Tell me how to find Raven! You've got to know where she is. I've been scouring this whole city for clues, but I've found no leads. You're my only hope!"

"And…that man? The guy with the skull paint? Why does he hate your name so much?"

At mention of the leader of Raven's kidnappers, an ominous shadow of rage fell over the woman's face, and Robin recoiled as he caught a glimpse of ice in her eyes. Her anger was rapidly becoming palpable, and Robin stood paralyzed as he waited for her to speak.

She said to him in a soft but powerful voice "That man, Brother Blood, is an affront to everything that we Azarathians held dear. He is responsible for the horrors that befell me before I came here, and it is he also that brought about the destruction of this sanctuary."

" _That explains why he spat her name with such malice back in Raven's room. He's probably terrified of her!"_

Arella continued in her soft tone.

"Though I long to tell you everything, child, the time is not right. The Ox and the Human have not found their truths yet. When they do, we will meet again, and I shall reveal all to you."

At that, she began to fade away once more, despite Robin's protesting. He was left alone on the rooftop, alone again, and still with many burning questions. The city continued to blaze around him, with the screams and demonic roars reverberating, as Robin stood silently wishing for the truth to come soon.

* * *

The chilling sound of the prayer horn echoed away as Cyborg stepped through the doorway. To his confusion, the room he was now in looked nothing like the hellish nightmare that he had imagined. Instead of flames consuming everything in sight, swirling shadows coated the décor, and his light was barely illuminating anything.

What it did touch upon were the massive torture instruments scattered around the room, filled with deadly spikes that were sharpened perfectly, and coated in what looked like dried blood. The instruments resembled the vile creations of old, one of them looking suspiciously like an iron maiden.

Besides the wicked looking machines, several blades were organized on a rusted metal shelf, along with various other materials that looked to be parts for a sword. Cyborg eyed them warily, confusion mixing in with his terror.

" _I don't get it. If this was a peaceful society, why the hell did somebody create a weapons cache? Not to mention these hideous machines!"_

On the table next to the blade shelf were two separate pieces of paper, one a design and the other a note probably describing it. Cyborg approached it and read it closely, noting that the ink used was a hideous, blood-like shade of red.

" _I will not stand by and allow a mere woman to humiliate me! What happened in the square should not have allowed to pass, and I will not rest until I have my vengeance! With my own hands, I will forge a weapon that no holy powers or demonic magic can hope to withstand. This weapon shall rip Arella and her vile daughter to pieces, and not even Azar herself can hope to stop me! In the shadows of these rooms, not even our leader's gift of foresight can hope to reveal what I am creating!_

 _My fellow citizens have willingly blinded themselves to the presence of evil that Azar allowed to come here. With this blade of mine, I shall obliterate those two witches, and set all of Azarath free from the illusion of peace that has fallen over their souls!"_

Cyborg shuddered and glanced at the sword design next to it. It, too, had been drawn in that ugly red ink. The sword appeared to be made of a jagged black material, with ominously glowing crimson runes adorning it. It looked deadly, and seemed to be a weapon born perfectly from a maddened, murderous mind.

" _That's sick! I'll bet big bucks that Raven is Arella's daughter. Who would've wanted to kill them so badly? And to go out of their way to make a sword like this too…"_

He gulped as he imagined an assailant attempting to impale his beloved friend with the sword designed on the paper.

Before he could continue worrying about the sword, Cyborg heard something fall not too far from him, along with muffled shrieking and roaring. He whirled around, and his light fell on a door only a few feet from the table. He pounded forward, yanked it open, and gawked in horror at the scene before him.

A demonic looking man stood towering over what looked like a cowering young girl, holding the weapon incarnate. It gleamed ominously in Cyborg's light, and the man's face, a horrifying visage with glowing red eyes and a mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth, was sneering down at the girl before him as he prepared to stab her.

" **NO**!" Cyborg shouted angrily as he dashed towards the demon, taking him by surprise.

The teen titan managed to land a powerful punch to the demon's face, and it struggled to recover from the shock and pain. When it did, it roared a bestial challenge to Cyborg, and tried to swing the blade at him.

Cyborg caught the hand holding the blade, and held it in a crushing grip, stopping the blade from being swung at him, and holding the demon in place. The two combatants glared at each other with seething fury as the demon struggled to move.

With a yell, Cyborg employed a surge of strength, and wrested the sword from the demon's grip, to his opponent's utter shock. With a sneer, Cyborg turned the wall to his left, zoomed towards it and swung the blade against the stone with all of his might. Upon contact, the blade was brutally shattered, obsidian shards scattering everywhere. Cyborg turned to face the demon, and coldly tossed the broken hilt away, wearing a smug smirk.

The demon roared in rage and ran towards him, preparing to use its fists instead. Cyborg scoffed, and landed a sucker punch to the creature's stomach, followed up by a ferocious blow to the forehead. With those two hits, the demon was sent flying, landing hard in a crumpled mess on the floor, groaning in agony.

When he saw that he had won the fight, Cyborg turned to comfort the girl, but then paused in shock.

While the entity looking up at him in terror was clearly feminine, she looked almost exactly like her oppressor, except with two purple eyes. The girl had her hands locked in front of her in a defensive stance as she gazed up at him with obvious terror.

Cyborg made himself calm down and gently tell her "I promise, I won't hurt you, and I won't let that bastard lay a finger on you either".

He gave her a warm smile, and after a pause, she seemed to relax, lowering her hands and watching Cyborg curiously.

They both heard the demon man growling behind them, and Cyborg turned around to glare down at him. The monster was snarling at him, but Cyborg was no longer impressed. He stormed up to him and suddenly began shouting down at him, making the wretch cower just like the demon girl had moments before.

"It was you who wrote that note, wasn't it?! It was **you** who planned on killing Raven and her mother! For what? For your pathetic pride?!"

The demon began to growl back at him in a guttural, warbled language, but Cyborg cut him off with more shouting.

" **Like I give a shit about your excuses**! All Raven ever did was exist, and that's all it took for you to want her dead?! You make me sick!"

Cyborg leaned in so that he was mere inches from the man's terrified face, and let his voice drop down to a sinister whisper.

"In the end, you're just the same as Trigon."

Both the man and girl behind Cyborg let out a loud gasp as they registered what he had said. Cyborg stood back up with a sneer, and continued, enjoying putting the man in his place.

"You are **nothing**. You're a coward who got his precious ego hurt, and wanted to get revenge on a girl who only wanted love and acceptance. You're pathetic, and you owe Raven a longwinded, sincere apology for everything you've done to her!"

The man tried to argue in his language, but Cyborg wouldn't have it. With a snarl of his own, he seized the monster by his wrist, and flung him towards the girl, where he collapsed on his knees. The girl was watching Cyborg in confusion and more fear as she saw her attacker up close once more. Cyborg looked down at her, pondering the nature of her identity.

" _She isn't Raven…but, she_ _ **is**_ _…this is confusing as hell, but I think I get what this girl represents."_

Cyborg snapped at the man "Do it!", and he and the girl watched warily as the demon looked up at her with a humiliated look, saying nothing for several long seconds.

Finally, the man bowed his head in shame, and began to ramble in his obscure language as the girl looked at him silently. Cyborg couldn't hope to understand what the demon was saying, but as he listened, he saw the look on the girl's face change from terror to something much calmer. The man went on for a few minutes, before he stopped and looked up at the girl with what seemed to be a silent plea on his face.

The girl looked up at Cyborg, and it was clear that she was asking him for guidance. He gave her a firm, reassuring nod, and she hesitantly turned back to the man in front of her.

With a deep breath, the girl muttered back to him in the same guttural language a few soft words, eliciting a surprised look from the monster.

The instant she was finished, the prayer horn suddenly blared into life once more, taking Cyborg by surprise, but failing to faze either of the entities before him. As the sound rose and fell quicker than it had before, Cyborg watched as darkness slowly began to cover the scene, enveloping all three of them and preventing his meager light from illuminating anything.

After a long minute of waiting in the pitch darkness, the horn faded away once more, and a small golden light appeared in the middle of the room, where Cyborg was now alone. He looked around, bewildered, before he walked up to the light to see that it was coming from a chunk of golden stone. On close inspection, parts of runes similar to the ones found on the sword's design were etched on it, along with the image of a strong ox standing firm and proud.

" _Oh, that's right, the Ox! Well…I guess this is my 'piece of truth' then."_

He took it in his hand, and returned to the other room, to see that the torture instruments and swirling shadows had disappeared, leaving only the blades on a smooth shelf and the two pieces of paper resting idly. Cyborg breathed a long sigh of relief at seeing that he had somehow escaped the nightmarish transformation that had befallen the basement of the warehouse, and made his way towards the upper levels, aching to escape the decrepit building.

" _You know, I wonder if Beast Boy finally found his place yet. That was a really obscure definition…'the shelter of truth'? That could be anything."_

Cyborg shrugged, and began the ascent upwards, hoping that their journey would come to an end soon, his mid still focused on the terrified girl cowering in the darkness.


	8. Sanctuary for Troubled Secrets

After what had seemed like the longest journey of his life, Beast Boy finally sighted what had to be the most important building within the city, judging by its massive size. What looked like a temple was looming up high in the distance, towering over the other skyscrapers.

Beast Boy gazed up at it in awe. The structure dwarfed the Titans' Tower by several stories. He saw the staircase leading up to the main entrance, and groaned at the sheer length of the steps.

" _Yeah, that's so not happening."_

In an instant, he transformed into a falcon, and flew up to the top of the steps in merely a fraction of the time it would've taken him to walk. When he re-shifted, he was wearing a smug smirk, satisfied at his successful endeavor to avoid even more walking.

In front of him stood the massive golden doors of Azarath's temple, gleaming in the grey light. Beast Boy looked up at the doors, and let his thoughts drift to Raven once more.

" _I failed her. I blew it. I swore that I would never let her be harmed again after I let out that monster within me. And…she was kidnapped right under my very nose. I failed to protect Raven, just like I failed to protect…"_

He shook his head violently, in a desperate attempt to avoid remembering the painful memories of the past.

As he stood in thought, the darkness began to fall over the city once more, and Beast Boy was left without any source of light besides the pitiful gleam given by his communications watch. He pushed earnestly against the doors, and they slowly swung open into a massive hall, shadowed and beckoning to him. Beast Boy walked in without any second thoughts, aching to do his part to find his best friend.

Just inside the hall was a single torch, hung on a brazier within reach. Beast Boy took it, and slowly swung it around as he took in his surroundings. He was in the first level of the temple, which contained what seemed to be a sort of church-like sanctuary, with rows of seats lining the interior of the chamber. Massive white pillars dotted the hall, and at the farthest end was the altar, with a wondrous symbol glimmering on top.

Beast Boy looked up at the massive twelve-pointed star, made of the purest gold that he had seen in Azarath since he had first arrived. He walked up to the altar before it, and saw that propped on it was a massive book written solely in the Azarathian language, blue runes filling the pages. Next to the book was a small piece of paper, this one written in English.

 **The Faith of Azarath**

" _When our forbearers and the first Azar arrived here, they shaped the foundations of our faith and beliefs._

 _Naturally, one of our greatest desires is to do our part to erase the hatred and violence still consuming the Earth. But most of all, our ultimate wish is to journey beyond even this sanctuary of ours, into the realm beyond, the true paradise that has been sought for so long._

 _As visitors to this holy temple can observe, our people's sign is the twelve-pointed star that represents the Divine that we dearly adore. Many of us have wondered if there is any specific significance to the number of points on the star. The common theory that has been produced is that the twelve points might be a reference to the original twelve tribes and twelve disciples mentioned in the Holy Word of our ancestors. There is also a lesser discussed notion that the number twelve somehow represents supreme Divine authority and completion. Only the first Azar knew the true story behind this sign, and she has long passed into the paradise beyond this one."_

Beast Boy felt a small smile on his lips as he finished reading the text.

" _That's cool. So these people actually gave a damn about ending suffering. Good. And I gotta say, the idea of a real paradise…if that's where my mom and dad are…then, yeah, I'd wanna go there too."_

He sighed, and turned away from the altar, walking away towards one of the hall's corners, where another set of stairs rose up into the higher levels of the temple. His walk was interrupted by the sudden appearance of two white robed figures, one a child and the other an old woman with long, gray hair. The two female figures were standing together in the middle of the pews, the old woman placing a withered hand gently on the child's small shoulder.

Beast Boy watched them warily as they began to converse.

"Miss Azar?" the child softly asked, her head bowed in shame. "Is it…true what Joach and those horrible children said about me? That my father is…"

The old woman sighed mournfully and gave the child a slow nod.

"My dear, I am so sorry, but I cannot bring myself to hide the truth from you. Indeed, it would be pointless, when those people so cruelly attacked you with it."

The child gazed up at the elderly woman in horror as she went on.

"Yes, my child. Like those hateful people said, your father truly is Trigon, our ancient enemy. But dearest, know this: so long as you reside in this temple, so long as you are under my tutelage, I swear to you that no harm shall come upon you. You are a daughter of Azarath, and nobody can take that from you."

Just as suddenly as they had appeared, the two female figures disappeared, leaving Beast Boy utterly confused. When it became clear that the apparition wouldn't return, he continued to move towards the stairs. He climbed the steps slowly, his legs still aching from his journey to the temple.

The next landing delivered him onto what looked like a massive dormitory, with rows of beds lined against the walls.

" _Must be the living quarters of the people who worked here."_

The room next to the dormitory was clearly some sort of study, with massive bookcases towering into the darkness of the ceiling. Small silver desks spotted the room, most of them containing quills and ink for writing. Beast Boy walked around, admiring the furniture, when his torchlight gleamed on a white piece of parchment with faded blue writing that barely reflected his light.

He inspected it, to see that the paper had been hastily hidden inside one of the desk's compartments. When he gently pulled the paper out and smoothed it over, Beast Boy could see that the paper contained some strange sort of diary entry from one of the upholders of the temple.

" _I have known for the longest time that our leader always makes strong decisions because of the clarity of her foresight gift. Even then, I can't help but silently question what she is demanding of that poor girl._

 _I understand, by all means, that each and every one of us Azarathians must refrain from anger, but Azar is teaching this child to constantly suppress any remote hint of it. While I understand that this is related to the heritage that she did not ask for, I also know that constantly attempting to bottle up one's fury will never abate it, only allow it to seethe and boil before it finally erupts._

 _This is an unfair requirement placed upon the shoulders of a little girl who has already been through so much torment at the hands of that monster, Joach. Though I have no desire to openly confront our leader over this, I will not deny my own contempt at Azar's wish to not allow the child to even open her heart up about the pain she has suffered. This is absurd, this is unhealthy, and I can only imagine what will inevitably happen should Arella's child fail to hold her anger in forever."_

He pulled back in confusion, wondering who had been the subject of the note. Then, it dawned on him.

" _They're talking about Raven, aren't they?"_

Beast Boy and the rest of the Titans knew that Raven was constantly struggling to maintain her emotions and remain neutral. For the longest time, nobody was sure why, until he and Cyborg had accidentally ventured into her mind via that weird mirror of hers. Inside her subconscious, they had discovered the manifestation of her suppressed rage, which had taken the form of none other than Trigon, her demonic father. It was only by urging Raven to combine with all of her other emotions that she was able to subdue her own rage once more.

" _But I don't get it. What was this 'Azar' lady so afraid of? What did she think that Raven would do if she lost it?"_

He headed back to the stairs, and continued upwards, going higher and higher until he thought his legs would finally collapse. After what seemed like forever, he finally came to the next landing. Beast Boy could see a long hall with numerous doors lining the wall on one side, and on the opposite side, a few vertical slits resembling windows lay, showing nothing but the pitch darkness covering Azarath.

The doors lining the hall were mostly locked, except for one midway down the hall. Beast Boy gripped the bronze knob and twisted it, allowing the door to swing inward. When he walked inside, he saw that it was a storeroom of sorts, with a variety of strange looking potions lining one shelf, and more musty tomes lining another. His torchlight revealed one other piece of paper laying idly next to one stack of books, this one much longer than the small journal note that he had read in the study.

 **Sudden Disappearance of Juris**

" _Not long after Arella arrived here under the guidance of some of our monks, she gave birth to the daughter that would come to fill many of us with paranoia over her nature. Out of all of the Azarathians, there was none so terrified of this infant girl than Juris, one of the magistrates. Juris and his close colleague Joach were constantly attempting to make Azar herself see their opinion, that allowing Raven to exist in our city would only bring destruction._

 _Naturally, Azar refused to listen to them, and so, Juris hatched a plan to rid Azarath of the innocent girl forever. Because he resided in the temple alongside Azar and the rest of us, he had easy access to the Great Door, the interdimensional portal that was used long ago by the First Azar to lead others here to this sanctuary. At the entrance to the portal, Juris planned a malevolent scheme: to throw the infant into the abyss that lay beyond._

 _Many of us overheard him whispering madly about this plan, but few of us took it to heart. But it seems that he did attempt to carry it out, for only a few days ago, he suddenly disappeared from the temple and the city. It was the strangest occurrence that we had seen in ages. Galya, the girl's caretaker, went mad with terror when Arella found out that her daughter was missing. Both women came to our temple, and begged our aid in helping. Azar, by her supernatural talents, and with an ominous sense of fear, lead us to the portal. Nobody would have thought to look there, for the Door is only used on missions to Earth._

 _Sure enough, there she was, the infant sound asleep and unharmed in front of the portal, which had a sinister fading red aura emanating from it. Just in front of the Door was a pile of ashes, which gave off a hideous stench. As Azar explained, it seems that something from beyond the door intervened for the child's sake to save her, while at the same time obliterating Juris completely._

 _Though Azar did her best to calm us all down, all of us, Arella especially, believed that it was none other than Trigon that was responsible for Juris's passing."_

Beast Boy snarled at the thought of some vile man trying to kill off his best friend as a mere infant. He gritted his teeth, and felt his hands curl into claws, the anger inside him flaring up so badly, it was a miracle that he didn't shift into his werebeast form once more.

He took a deep breath, and made himself take a look at the assorted potions in the room. They were a myriad of pretty colors, ranging from a light teal to a vibrant pink. Their labels were only written in Azarathian runes, preventing Beast Boy from knowing their purposes.

While he was checking out the potions, the door slowly swung shut, and a small click could be heard as it locked itself without warning. Beast Boy flinched, and ran to it, trying to open it, but to no avail. He cursed under his breath and backed away from it, trying to think of a plan to open it. Just as he was about to consider shifting into an insect, he froze up as he heard malicious voices coming towards the room.

"We have no way of contacting our fellows outside in the city, and I'm certain that it's this damned darkness doing it! I tell you, it feels like this city itself is trying to kill us!"

Another voice scoffed and replied "Don't be ridiculous. This place, sentient and murderous? You've read _The Shining_ too much."

"Don't mock me! Also, where did our leader go? He and four of our men went to seize the whelp, but the only message I remember getting from him was to watch out because of some sort of 'trespassers'."

"Oh, you mean that girl's friends? How pitiful. Slaughtering a few teens should be easy."

Beast Boy felt a drop of sweat fall down his cheek, as he realized that these men were discussing plans to kill him and the rest of the Titans. He had no way of alerting his friends with the darkness blocking communication attempts, and he knew that based on what he was hearing, these were the same wretches who had kidnapped Raven and wounded Robin in the process.

"Let's keep scouring this building for whatever we can find. The others here with us in this pathetic excuse for a temple will keep searching for those brats too. From what Brother Blood studied, she only had four friends. We in this forsaken place easily number more than 20. They're completely outmatched."

The voices dwindled away towards the farther end of the hallway. After a few more moments, Beast Boy heard another click from the door, and when he hesitantly went to touch the doorknob, he found it mysteriously unlocked. It seemed that somebody or something had deliberately prevented him from walking out into the hall, in order to keep him safe from the wandering cultists.

He walked back out into the hall, and went back towards the stairwell, refusing to go in the same direction as the vile men. He continued to ascend, and the subsequent landing came sooner than the last, revealing a small hallway with a massive archway at the end. Beast Boy paused in wonder, and decided to investigate it.

What could only be the Great Door mentioned in the note stood erect and barren, no energies swirling within. Beast Boy looked it up and down, remembering the white gateway that had led them to Azarath.

" _I don't understand. Why didn't we end up in this temple? Why did that portal deliver us in the middle of the city?"_

"… _did that dove deliberately make us land in the middle of Azarath to avoid running into these cultists?"_

That was the only logical explanation that he could conjure, and Beast Boy didn't want to waste too much time gazing at the Door. He turned around and headed back towards the stairs, hoping that he was close to finding the "piece of truth" that the poem had described.

He resumed his ascent upwards, until he came to the last landing on the stairwell, which gave way to an even smaller hall with only one door on the left side, with nothing else but a single window on its opposite. Beast Boy headed to the door, and a strange sense of dread suddenly came over him. He tried to understand why he felt such an ominous shift in the atmosphere, and then, he racked his brain over the notes he had read.

" _Wait a minute. If Raven lived here in the temple at one point…is this room…?"_

The plain bronze knob turned easily in his hand, and Beast Boy pushed the door open, watching it swing forward into a pitch dark bedroom.

It was one of the plainest bedrooms that he had ever seen. A small, twin-sized bed lay against the wall, covered in simple white sheets with one pillow resting on top. A smaller version of the twelve-pointed star was the only decoration in the room, nailed to the wall in front of him. Besides that, a small chest, presumably for clothes, was the only other furniture. Beast Boy looked around, looking for more obvious proof that this room's resident was who he suspected it to be. He closed the door, and did his best to scour the room for more clues by the light of his torch.

Without warning, a white robed figure appeared in the middle of the room, an apparition that gave off a faint light. Beast Boy gawked at the girl he saw, who looked meek and weary, kneeling on the floor in the middle of a sigil that looked suspiciously like an occult symbol that he had once seen. The girl's head was bowed in concentration.

"This is it."

She raised her head, and Beast Boy gasped as he recognized the younger version of Raven.

"That kind man in the white robe from my dream…he told me how I can learn more about my father. He told me about this ritual, which he promised would yield the results I'm looking for."

Beast Boy's eyes widened in terror as a sense of what was about to happen dawned on him.

The young version of Raven clasped her hands together, shut her eyes, and began chanting an incantation in what may have been the language of her people. Whatever it was, the sigil she was sitting in flared into life, a horrible blood-red color filling the room. Beast Boy gawked as a loud rumbling could be heard just outside the room, sounding like it was right next to the temple.

Raven opened her eyes and gasped in shock at the sight of the red sigil. Together, she and Beast Boy yelped in alarm as without warning, the prayer horn began to sound viciously, louder than he had ever heard it. Raven turned towards Beast Boy, looking through him to her door and the outside of the temple. The two of them shuddered as a deep, rumbling laughter could be heard outside of the walls, echoing maliciously throughout the temple.

"No…no!" she screamed, and she began to fade away along with the sigil as a massive wind blew into the room between the cracks of the door, blowing away Beast Boy's torch and plunging the bedroom into darkness.

Beast Boy reached out towards where her image had been just a moment before, and cried out "Raven!" as the prayer horn and the awful laughter began to fade away ominously.

From beyond the door, the revolting stench of burning blood choked him as the immense heat that he had failed to become used to returned. Beast Boy warily eyed the crack below the door, where blood was seeping through, along with a hellish red light. He knew that he had no choice but to proceed into the hall beyond and see what had befallen the pristine temple.

" _Raven…Raven summoned Trigon by accident? So that guy in the dream…that couldn't have been a guy from this place! That bastard tricked her!"_

" _I gotta find my 'piece of truth' and get out of here. Raven…"_

Beast Boy walked hesitantly up to the door, and seized the knob, twisting it slowly as he readied himself to see the horrors that awaited him.


	9. Desecration and Rage

**Trigger Warning: Severe Violence**

When he opened the door, Beast Boy recoiled at the sight of blood welling up from the floor and dripping down the walls in crimson streaks. Lines of fire intermingled with the blood, creating a horrendous stench, and causing the entire hall to overheat. He saw that the lone window in the hall showed that the sky outside had turned into an infernal orange, and the barely audible screams could be heard echoing in the distance once more.

The walls of the temple were now colored in a rusty scarlet, everything in sight consumed and corrupted by the stain. Upon closer inspection, Beast Boy could see demonic faces leering at him from within the walls, demented and twisted visages sneering at him with mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. He turned and fled towards the stairwell, desperate to make his escape from the depraved temple.

He dashed down the stairs, the steps now looking utterly blackened. When he neared the landing next to the dormitory, horrific screams could be heard resounding from all directions. Beast Boy carefully peeked around the corner and saw the carnage transpiring in the distance.

Numerous feminine-looking scarlet demons with rapidly twitching faces were shrieking with insane laughter as they seized the fleeing cultists and ripped them apart, limb from limb. The hapless cultists had nowhere to run, as the maniacal aberrations were rushing towards them from every corner of what was once the peaceful dormitory. Beast Boy shuddered as he glanced at the beds, which were now nothing more than metal frames filled with cruel spikes, which numerous corpses were impaled upon.

The last of the cultists died with a bloodcurdling scream as one of the demons swiftly decapitated him with one swing of her sharp claws. A ferocious roar could be heard around the corner, and the demons, all finished with their victims, snapped their heads in the direction of the noise, which was coming from the study. They all continued to shriek their horrible laughter, and capered towards the roaring entity, nodding, twitching and looking beyond overjoyed at the horrors that they had wrought.

" _I feel like that hellish laughter they have could drive me insane! Where did these things come from?!"_

He silently followed the horde of demons, terror gripping him as he neared the source of the roar. When he came within sight of the room, he saw that it was no longer recognizable as a study, as everything in sight was splattered with blood, and more liens of fire were crisscrossing everywhere, setting the entire room ablaze. In the middle of the room was an entity even more monstrous in appearance than the cackling she-demons surrounding it.

The fiend was holding what seemed to be the last of the cultists high in the air with numerous wriggling black tentacles that spread his limbs far apart. The man was struggling in vain, watching his captor sneer up at him in a twisted smile that revealed the same horrible teeth as the images in the uppermost hall. Beast Boy shuddered and continued to watch in morbid fascination as the demons gathered around what appeared to be their leader, eagerly waiting for it to finish its execution.

The demon leader, which from a distance also seemed to be somewhat feminine, lifted a vicious looking black-tipped claw to the man's chest, and Beast Boy backed away, knowing what was about to happen. He turned and flew back to the stairs as the man's screams turned into a nauseating squelch, and then the demon queen could be heard bellowing a triumphant roar. Beast Boy shuddered and ran as fast as he could, his legs pounding the withered metal flooring. All of a sudden, the queen emitted a violent shriek, and Beast Boy could hear the entire horde chasing after him.

In an instant, he shifted into his cheetah form, and he bolted down the stairs to the ground floor, zooming past the obliterated chapel. The twelve-pointed star lay on the ground in shattered pieces, and more blood and fire could be seen swirling around the room. The pews had been crushed and overturned, with what looked like dismembered limbs scattered about. All of the imagery combined made Beast Boy gag, as he rounded the corner towards the main doors.

When he came up to the rotted doors, he saw that the bronze had decayed into the same ugly scarlet as the rest of the temple. He shifted back into his human form, and desperately pushed against the doors, but to no avail. Beast Boy froze up in terror when he heard the mob come close. He turned around, and shuddered when he finally saw in full the demon queen.

Where her eyes should have been were instead four blackened slits, and she was reaching towards him with her swirling tentacles and vicious claws. Her demonic attendants were urging her forward with shrieks of glee, pointing at Beast Boy and pumping their clawed fists in the air excitedly. It seemed that their queen was truly blind. They gave her subtle pushes forward, and the queen barreled towards him, ready to rip him to pieces.

Beast Boy was now hyperventilating, and without any escape plan. He eyed the monstrosity coming forward, and a weird memory suddenly came into his mind, of one of his first skirmishes against the villains of Jump City. The image of the petty thief Dr. Light screaming in terror as his best friend dragged him into the darkness under her swirling cloak, black tentacles clutching at him made him pause in confusion.

His fear disappeared, and he eyed the queen carefully. Beast Boy took one small step forward, trying his best to examine the creature and see if his theory had any real substance. Another memory came to mind, of the moment in Raven's subconscious when her rage had been subdued, and had transformed into a doppelganger of her with four glowing red slits for eyes. The queen's blackened slits were a near-perfect match.

As the fiend came closer, about to seize him with her tentacles, Beast Boy asked her with nothing but incredulity, " **Raven?!** "

At once, the queen paused in shock, and her handmaidens did the same, their maniacal laughter ceasing as they all eyed him with cocked expressions of confusion. The scene would've been comical, if Beast Boy wasn't about to be slaughtered.

A moment later, the lesser demons faded into thin air, leaving Beast Boy alone with the shaken queen. He watched in awe as the tentacles disappeared as well, and she dropped her claws to her side, their tips shrinking. The four black slits in her face transformed into two violet eyes that were looking at Beast Boy in utter bafflement. As the queen's twisted crimson visage faded away, it left behind a girl robed in gray, shaking and speechless.

Raven stood mere inches before Beast Boy, quivering and struggling to speak, her mouth agape in confusion.

Neither could he, as he was still bewildered by what he had just seen transpire. For several moments, the two best friends stood locked in each other's gaze, trying to find words. Beast Boy barely managed to find his voice, and did his best to make himself talk.

"R-raven? What…I don't…"

She shuddered, and asked back "Beast Boy? How did you…that's…"

Then, she began to speak much quicker and desperately.

"Beast Boy, you can't! You, you shouldn't be-"

The prayer horn suddenly roared into life, drowning out her words. Her whole body seemed to become sluggish, and Beast Boy watched as her mouth formed words that he couldn't hope to hear.

He reached out towards her with a hand aching to grasp hers, and she did the same, as a flash of white light filled his vision, blinding him for several seconds. Beast Boy closed his eyes and winced, not opening them until the flash and horn disappeared.

When he opened them, Raven was gone, along with the hellish transformation that had overtaken the temple. Everything had returned to its former appearance, the fire and blood gone, with the white walls once more pristine. He was completely alone.

"DAMN IT!" he screamed in frustration, as he collapsed to the floor and pounded it with his fists.

Just as he had been so close to rescuing her, she had been seized from his presence. It was all he could do to not break down on the spot.

A golden light slowly emerged into existence somewhere around the corner, and Beast Boy hesitantly looked at it, wondering what could possibly be its source. He shakily got up, and walked back towards the sanctuary, where the light could be seen on the altar, coming off of what looked like a stone of sort.

Upon closer inspection, it was the same type of stone that Beast Boy had seen when they had finally managed to contact Robin after their communications had been cut off by that bizarre darkness. Instead of the eagle, however, a lone human figure could be seen on the chunk of stone, in a reverent position that looked vaguely like prayer. Beast Boy pocketed it, and let his shoulders slump.

" _Well, I guess this is the 'piece of truth' that I was supposed to find. But…"_

He groaned with exhaustion and despair, as the memory of Raven's desperate words rang through his mind like a bell.

" _We were barely allowed to speak to each other. I came so close to finding her…and now she's gone again…or maybe, this isn't where she was to begin with?"_

" _I'm so confused. Was this, then, what that one note was talking about? What would happen if Raven snapped? But if that was Raven, why the hell did she just disappear like that? Was that a projection of her instead?"_

Beast Boy made himself walk towards the door, and while he continued to silent grieve over his missed rescue attempt, the mystery of what he had just seen hung over him.

" _If that was just her projection, then that means that she has to be somewhere else that nobody can find. But…where?"_

* * *

 _(Moments before the shift, in one of the old prayer paths of the city)_

Robin panted hard as he fled through the alleyway, dodging around the corners as he tried to outrun his assailants.

The hell that had warped the city of Azarath had caught him by surprise this time, as when the prayer horn had rung out, he was certain that he had heard Trigon's horrible laughter reverberating with it. When he had gone to investigate it, he had originally been walking idly along one of the streets, still pondering his meek conversation with Arella. The transformation of the once-sacred place into what he had barely seen in his nightmare was now scarred into his mind, the flames and screaming Azarathians etched into his memories.

The demonic roaring that he had first heard up on the top of the tower had sounded just a few feet behind him hardly moments after the horn had echoed into silence, and he had fled as fast as he could away. Robin knew that something atrocious had created the claw marks he had seen in the nightmare's alleyway, and he wanted to be nowhere near its source.

To his despair, the alleyway ended in a similar dead end as the one before, only without the impaled corpse. Robin desperately looked around him for a way out, but it became even more apparent that he was trapped. He froze up as the roaring came closer, and moments later, the creatures rounded the final bend.

Scarlet, inflamed demons with Trigon's four red slits and razor-sharp claws stalked towards Robin, aching to shred him, just as they had likely done to the hapless cultists who had wandered the streets prior to the Titan's arrival. All Robin could do was cower in fear as they came ever closer.

He closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift to his teammate, his last desire to see her one last time.

" _I'm sorry, Raven."_

A white light flashed beyond the darkness of his closed eyes, and Robin opened them in astonishment. He looked up at the building to his right, where a white robed figure was rapidly floating down towards him. Robin gawked up at Arella as she descended, recognizing the steely determination in her eyes. As the demons came within feet of him, she pushed her feet off of the building's side, bolting towards him with an outstretched hand.

Robin desperately reached out with his own hand, and just as the demons were about to maul him, he and Arella's hands firmly grasped each other's.

The prayer horn blared into life once more, and a blinding white flash of light filled Robin's vision, forcing him to close his eyes again. He could feel the grisly hot breath of the demons mere inches from his face as he felt the ground beneath his feet shift. When the light and the horn finally faded away, Robin opened his eyes to find that his surroundings had changed.

He was now in a small, quaint garden, the white fog laying over the city and the snow dancing around him. It seemed that Robin was in a part of the city that he hadn't explored in his endeavor to find clues. Clusters of white lilies dotted the grass in the area, and a small pond of crystal clear water could be seen a few feet away. As he admired the scenery, Robin heard soft footsteps coming towards him from behind.

When he turned around, he saw Arella walking up to him with that same solemn look on her face. They were soon only a foot away from each other, and the pair took a moment to eye each other silently as the fog swirled around them.

At last, she began to speak.

"The four pieces of truth have finally been found" she told him quietly. "But before that truth is made whole, it is time that I reveal to you Azarath's truth… **my truth**."

Robin felt a shiver of excitement run up and down his spine, as the talk that he had been aching to have from the moment he had seen Arella in his nightmare was about to become reality.


	10. Ballad of the Messenger Angel

**Trigger Warning: Mention of Rape and Attempted Suicide**

The two stood in silence as Robin waited for Arella to begin.

"As you now know, I am indeed Raven's mother" she told him, her face an emotionless mask. "But what you do not know is how she was…conceived."

A soft sigh passed through her lips.

"Long before I became an Azarathian, as you read in this city's library, I was once known as Angela Roth, a young girl with no place to run for comfort. For as long as I could remember, my parents had abandoned me, leaving me to be thrown from one foster care system to another, like a boat forever doomed to be tossed about on stormy waters. I yearned for spiritual comfort, and I sought out multiple churches, but my soul found nothing there that would appease its immense pain. And so, out of desperation for a place to call my own, I was seduced by a group that I would later discover to be Azarath's direst human enemy."

Robin gulped, recalling the note he had discovered in the school's warped history room about how Trigon had been created, and shakily asked "The Church of Blood?"

Arella nodded solemnly, and she whispered "Yes, my child, and it is right for you to speak that vile name with such care. It is frightening indeed, to know that for whatever horrible reasons they had, a group of humans would madly desire to worship the fiend created from the first Azarathians' long-expelled hatred."

"When I first joined them, I was enamored with what seemed on the surface to me a sincere desire to help me heal from the painful loneliness that I had endured for years. At the time of my entrance into the cult, I had hardly passed the age of 18. I had no foster home to go back to, and the Church members told me that they would forever give me a home to call my own, so long as I did what they told me to do. Perhaps the first warning sign that I failed to recognize with them was that I was, evidently, their only female member."

He paused in confusion, and asked her "Wait, but what about their mothers? Their sisters?"

All she did was shake her head sadly, and tell him "Gone, my child. Only the Divine truly knows what became of them."

"Because, as I told you, I was aching to finally find some semblance of peace, I foolishly agreed to bend to whatever strange doctrines they would place before me. Their leader, that monster who is called Brother Blood by the rest of the Church, implored me to allow myself to be used in a ritual that would make me, in his words, 'the bride of Satan'…to no longer be just a street rat ignored and spat upon by the rest of humanity, to be feared and respected. My anger towards my mistreatment at the hands of others blinded me to the consequences of my acceptance."

"On the night the ritual took place, Brother Blood and his attendants inscribed a sigil onto the floor of their 'sanctuary', if you will. They had be stand before this sigil in wait, as they intoned words in a language that I had no hope of understanding. It sounded unearthly, more ancient than Latin, Sanskrit, or any other elder language of the Earth. Whatever they said…it did work. In a cloud of flashing smoke and fire, the man appeared. The one that they told me would bed with me…my angel…my would-be king."

Robin shuddered involuntarily, as he imagined how the scene continued. An ominous sense of dread was falling over Arella's words, and a shadow of something painful could be seen crossing her face.

"What happened…after the man was summoned?" he asked her hesitantly, seeing the anguish on her face.

Arella gritted her teeth, and whispered "I was…taken to bed by the man that Brother Blood summoned. I was exhilarated. Here, I thought, the long years of loneliness were about to be justified by this grand moment. But, just as we were about to consummate, he…transformed. Transformed into…"

" **Trigon** " Robin muttered, and all he wanted to do was hold Arella and comfort her, as he watched the woman quiver from the memories that she was recalling.

"I had no say in what happened next, and I had no hope of fighting him off. I was powerless against that wretch. When he was finished with me, he disappeared bellowing with that horrible laughter, mocking me as I lay on my bed, cowering and weeping after being lied to by the men that I had trusted. Brother Blood and his fellows refused to offer me any comfort or compassion, and they reveled in their successful venture to have Trigon's seed begotten."

Robin told her softly "I'm so sorry…I'm so…you didn't…"

Arella said back "Nobody deserves to suffer what I did at the hands of the Church of Blood. The fate those vile men had in store for me, from the instant they lured me into their clutches, nobody deserves to experience, be they man or woman."

"Under the cloak of night, while the cultists were busy congratulating themselves on tricking me into falling for their trap, I fled. Though I did not know where to go, I did not care, only to put as much distance between myself and the Church as possible. But while I eventually managed to put plenty of physical distance between myself and the wicked hands of Brother Blood, my soul could not hope to flee from the emotional ravages that my time there had wrought. In time, I came to fully hate myself for not seeing the cruelty underneath their masks of kindness."

"All the meanwhile, I was painfully aware that I had a child growing in my womb. Even though this child, without a doubt, was sired by that demon, I could not bear to wish death upon it. In a way, the child was all that I had to comfort me in the months following my escape from the Church. But as the summer months dwindled into the cold emptiness of winter, my hope too faded away, and I sought a means to end my suffering forever. I found a tossed away bottle of sleeping pills in the slums of the city. My desire was to use them to give myself eternal rest and the ultimate escape from the horrors that I had suffered."

Robin could see her in his mind, like the history text from the library had described, curled up in one of the shadowed alleyways of New York City, the empty pill bottle next to her as she waited for death to release her.

"As the shadows fell upon me, a new light came into my path. Somehow, my agony had alerted the people of Azarath to my location, and an entourage of their missionaries hurried to my side. With whatever mystical abilities they had received by the training of the third Azar, they sensed my imminent death, along with the nature of the child within me. Even though they were wary of my history, and who I had been tricked into associating with, they gently carried me to the sanctuary of Azarath, to the temple where I came face to face with that wondrous woman."

"Azar gladly healed me, and promised me that here in the city of Azarath, I would be forever safe from the clutches of Brother Blood. She gave me my new name, which, as you know, translates to 'Messenger Angel'. For the sake of my child, Azar also promised that she would watch over me and my offspring, so that both of us would know true peace after my long, painful journey. When I finally gave birth to my daughter, Azar swiftly named her, and gave me a nursemaid named Galya to help me take care of her."

"Alas, peace would not come easily for me and Raven here, for as you saw in the shadows of the school, Joach and those likeminded individuals actively despised us both, and it was not until I nearly ended his life in murderous fury that the entirety of Azarath finally accepted that nothing could send me and Raven away. Azar was furious at her people's malice, and deliberately took Raven under her tutelage in the safety of the temple. To further add insult to injury in the eyes of those who hated us, on her deathbed, Azar chose me as her successor, and transferred her many abilities to me, including her cherished gift of foresight."

" _But how did Trigon destroy this place?"_ Robin wondered silently. _"I don't understand. Somebody here had to have opened a way for him to arrive here…but who?"_

Arella continued in a grave tone.

"Not long after Azar's passing, in the tenuous months afterwards, my daughter had a vivid dream of who appeared to be an ancient Azarathian man, from what she believed to be the generation of the first Azar. In this dream, the man appealed to her desire to learn the entire truth about her father, by instructing her in a ritual that he said would reveal all. Raven, my innocent child who was only seeking guidance on her heritage, fell to the trap haplessly. The ritual she performed was not one of clarification, but one of summoning."

Robin gasped, and shakily asked Arella "N-no! Are you seriously telling me-"

"Yes, child" Arella told him softly. "It was Raven who called Trigon into Azarath. But she had been lied to, as her mother was lied to years before."

The pieces fell into place within Robin's mind, and anger for his teammate flared violently.

" **That bastard**!" he snarled, and Arella nodded, her own rage narrowing her eyes venomously.

"Brother Blood impersonated himself as an Azarathian, in order to trick Raven into unwittingly giving Trigon the entryway he needed into our sanctuary, and to obliterate it as he and the Church of Blood had desired for so long."

The two of them paused for a brief moment as the full scope of the story weighed down on Robin. At last, he finally understood why Raven had refused to tell him about her mother. The shame and residual terror of her role in Azarath's destruction must have been too great a barrier for her to open up any further.

Arella gazed up at the grey sky above them, and Robin knew that she was burdened with the memory of the Azarathian's genocide.

"We were no match for that fiend" she told Robin quietly. "Though we all banded together, we could not hope to withstand the demons that he summoned. We were powerless against the ultimate might that he unleashed on Azarath. Those of us who hadn't been mauled and burned to death by Trigon and his servants were instantly wiped out by the nova that he released, crushing the city to ruins, and sending the rest of us to the paradise beyond."

She looked at Robin now, miraculously still wearing her emotionless mask after what she had described to him.

"As for my daughter, she was unfortunate enough to witness her father's entrance into our home. I was there, outside the temple, watching Trigon leer at her through the lone window outside her room. Even from a distance, I could see the look of horror on her face. In my desperation, and in a bid to prevent her from seeing the full length of the tragedy that was about to ensue, I used Azar's power to forcibly teleport her to Earth, to the outskirts of the city where you, her and the rest of your friends would eventually meet for the first time."

Robin would never forget the memory of when his team had first come together, on a night in Jump City when Starfire, first an unknown alien girl on what seemed to be a violent rampage throughout their city, nearly overcame them. Raven's timing during the fight had been impeccable, as her suggestion to the three boys that fighting wasn't the answer to Starfire's fury was key to Robin seeing that all his future teammate wanted was release from her bonds.

"For a few years before that meeting, my daughter wandered the streets of Jump City like I once had within New York. Using the powers within her, she changed her white robe into one much darker, and reminiscent of the grief she was carrying. The memory of what she had seen befall Azarath would leave my poor daughter scarred, and terrified of the same fate headed for Earth. Thankfully, because she was able to trust in you four, Earth escaped Azarath's fate."

Robin asked her "But, I don't understand. If Azarath was destroyed, then…why…?"

Arella nodded at him, and looked around them at the massive skyscrapers shrouded in the swirling fog and dancing snow. From the beginning of his dream, Robin had been baffled by the bizarre nature of the city he was in.

"My child, before I continue, you must be aware of what your friend, the half-machine, half-human one learned when he finally reached his destination. Azarath was, and still is fully conscious and sentient. This sacred place has a mind of its own, and its prime ability is to manifest the deepest thoughts of those who belong to it."

A shudder went up and down Robin's spine, as his question of why the buildings of the city seemed to have a mind of their own was finally answered.

"Each of us, Raven included, were tied to Azarath, and Azarath to us. In the beginning, the first Azar and those who followed her here longed to see the realization of the paradise that had been taught to them by their teachers. This place heard their wishes, and willingly chose to aid them in creating the buildings you have seen. Even the violence it faced at the hands of Trigon and his servants was not enough to fully destroy it, because its last daughter had escaped unscathed. This whole time, Azarath has been in a perpetual dying state, unable to end its torment because Raven lived on. It begrudged her not, but nonetheless ached for release. Ironically, it is Brother Blood that has given Azarath its chance to accomplish that."

Robin only stared at her in confusion, and Arella continued on.

"When Brother Blood and his helpers invaded your home, they subdued Raven by plunging her into a ritual that targeted her hidden, repressed memories of the horrors she experienced on Azarath, both at the hands of her human tormentors, and of the knowledge that she had opened the way for our people to be slaughtered. At the instant this ritual was triggered, Azarath and Raven unconsciously reached out to each other from afar, and Azarath decided to manifest Raven's darkest nightmares as its new form, in order to exact revenge on the people it knew to be ultimately responsible for its agony."

She paused as Robin sputtered "Wait, then those corpses! Those are-"

"Yes. What you saw were the cultists who were caught unaware by the first transformation that Azarath undertook, and by the manifested creatures that it created out of Raven's subconscious. You see, Brother Blood's plan was to take Raven back to Azarath, and to have the entirety of the Church follow him there. Their intent was to blaspheme this holy place with their dark magic, but Azarath would never allow that. It willingly transformed itself into the hellish place that Raven's distorted memories perceived it to be, and massacred more than half of the wretches stationed here. Brother Blood and the three men you saw in Raven's room barely managed to escape to their preplanned destination."

Robin looked around him, at the fog, and turned back to Arella, asking her "But this fog? And the snow?"

She looked around too, and murmured "From what I have seen, this fog represents her foggy, repressed memories that she has struggled to restrain for so long. As for the snow, I believe that it represents the sheer fragility of that repression, as you have seen by how quickly the flakes melt."

"Something else that I have realized about Azarath's transformed state is…the prayer horn that we listened to, that told us when to gather in the center of the city for mass prayer sessions…it changed. On the day that Trigon invaded this place, Azarath deliberately changed its voice from a beautiful, clarion note into something similar I once heard during a terrible weather crisis in New York City. When Trigon came here, the prayer horn sounded eerily like the emergency sirens I heard long ago. That is what you and your friends have been hearing."

Robin perked up and pleadingly asked her "So you do know where Raven is? Then I beg you, tell me!"

Arella gave him the smallest of smiles, and told him "Yes, I do. Brother Blood has failed to detect me as I have moved about invisible to his eyes, and the eyes of his subordinates. They foolishly decided that fleeing into the underground inner sanctum of Azarath would give Blood the privacy he needs to complete his ritual. Unbeknownst to them, they fled into the core of the nightmare, and Brother Blood is now the last cultist standing. Azarath has successfully slaughtered the rest of them by using Raven's nightmares against them."

He shuddered again, and then said to Arella "Can you show me how to get there? I've searched all over this place for clues, but I can't find any entrance to the underground part you've mentioned."

Arella, to Robin's confusion, paused, and refused to meet his gaze for a moment. When she looked back at him, there was a tone of what seemed like remorse in her voice.

"I will teach you how to break the barrier that Blood set up over the stairs leading into Azarath's core, certainly my child…but before you and your friends proceed, there is another truth about the ritual that I feel obligated to tell you alone, because you seem to be the most levelheaded of my daughter's friends."

Robin gulped, as Arella took a deep breath, and spoke to him softer than he had ever heard her speak.

"My child…at the end of this journey… **my daughter is doomed to die**." 


	11. Revelation

Robin looked at her in utter horror, as he struggled to understand what Arella had just revealed.

"W-what?''

She gazed at him with her seemingly emotionless mask, as he struggled to comprehend what he had heard. Robin's knees collapsed, and he fell to the ground, looking up at Arella and holding out his hands to her in a plea.

"N-no! No! **Please!** "

At this, Arella's face collapsed into wrinkled lines of bitterness and grief, as she whispered to him heartbreakingly "I'm so sorry."

The two of them said nothing, as Robin began to weep once more, hot tears spilling over his cheeks as his thoughts reeled. He hadn't thought for a second, at any point during his journey into Azarath, that there was a chance that he would lose his teammate forever. All Robin had believed was that this was another rescue mission that, no matter how difficult the obstacles would seem, would end with Raven freed from her captors.

Arella's head was bowed in shame, and she whispered to him "It's…the nature of the ritual, my child. I overheard Brother Blood in his mind recanting the steps to completion. He intends to sacrifice her, body and soul, to rebirth her father by using her demonic heritage inherited from Trigon."

Robin couldn't say anything back to Arella, as he was too choked up with tears. He heard Arella continue to speak gently to him.

"But I beg you, do not lose faith! Together, Azarath and I have conceived a way to free Raven's soul from destruction."

"Please, child, hear me out, and allow me to explain to you why I brought you four here, despite this accursed fate that Raven fates. Azarath and I have been working in tandem this entire time to thwart Brother Blood's plan to sacrifice Raven. This place, along with using her nightmares to take revenge on the Church of Blood, has been creating manifestations of her greatest fears and darkest emotions. Azarath enabled each of you to defeat the most horrifying entities birthed out of Raven's subconscious, so that she would finally be freed from the terrors that Brother Blood has been using to subdue her."

At hearing this, Robin gained a faint glimmer of hope, and he looked back up at her. He gulped back his tears, and asked her "Is that why I found that glowing stone, after killing that grieving demon in the school?"

"Yes, my child" Arella told him. "In the distorted version of Azarath's school, you encountered the echo of Raven's trauma and self-loathing that she suffered at the hands of her classmates and teachers. As the Eagle, your mercy and grace was used to free Raven from the burden of those memories, and to thus aid Azarath in preventing Blood from further using that against her."

He nodded slowly, his grief momentarily subsiding, and muttered "What…about the others?"

Arella looked at him with confidence as she went on.

"Your red-haired friend successfully showed Raven in her nightmare that she was not responsible for the genocide of our people, and that instead, Brother Blood was. She did this through her courage, the courage that Raven needed to overcome her guilt."

"In the dark basement of Azarath's warehouse, your half-machine friend wielded his strength against the rage of what Raven perceived to be as Joach, the malicious teacher that encouraged her classmates to viciously assault her. Raven's fear of her fellow Azarathians was overturned by the apology that your friend demanded be given unto her by the manifestation of Joach, and by hearing her old teacher out, she was able to forgive him, setting her free in that manner too."

"And of course, your shapeshifting friend. In the hellish version of the temple, he bared witness to the manifestation of my daughter's suppressed rage and hatred boiling over after years of attempts to bury her anger. Blinded by her murderous fury, Raven unwittingly projected herself into the midst of the last surviving cultists, and massacred them just as we were massacred years ago. Your friend, despite seeing my daughter as a 'queen of demons', was able, with his inherent humility, to recognize the innocent girl within, and free her from her burning hatred.'

Arella's face relaxed, no longer burdened with bitterness, as she straightened up and declared to Robin "Together, you four have undone the vast majority of the subconscious horrors that Brother Blood has used to keep Raven trapped in his ritual. But one last horror must be undone, a lie that only Raven herself can obliterate: the lie that no matter what she does, no matter how much time passes, she will always be the daughter of Trigon."

Robin asked her "But how are we supposed to help Raven get rid of that? Is that even possible?"

Arella nodded and told him "It is. After you and I have finished conversing, I will guide the four of you back to your original meeting spot. There, you must combine the four pieces of truth that have been given to you by Azarath in reward for helping Raven conquer her nightmares. The completed truth will form a talisman used by us in our holy exorcism rituals. Take that talisman, and it will show you the way to the underground chamber where Raven waits."

He shakily stood up, and nodded back at her. Arella smiled, and walked up to him, placing a warm hand on his shoulder as she looked him firmly in the eyes.

"You and your friends have the opportunity to free my daughter's soul from the grasp of Trigon's taint. Do not let your grief prevent you from venturing forth into the core of this city and fighting the last battle. And…take this knowledge with you, too."

Robin gasped as words of power were suddenly poured into his mind, dancing around in chaos before they organized themselves, translating into a strange song that he had never heard of.

"That, my child, is one of our ancient hymns, sung when a poor soul struggling against the darkness needs vital encouragement to not give in. Sing that to Raven when you have closed in on her, and we will aid you in freeing my daughter from Blood's clutches."

She stepped back, and the smile faltered for a moment. Robin gave her a questioning look, and she bit her lip before continuing.

"I beg you, do not share with your friends the knowledge that Raven will pass at the end of this journey. And whatever you do, do not tell your shapeshifting friend, because for reasons that you have not seen, his grief over her loss will be the most traumatic of all."

At that, Arella faded into the fog, leaving Robin alone to his thoughts. He sighed, and looked up at the sky, which was beginning to darken for what he suspected would be the last time. As the curtain of pitch blackness fell over Azarath, he turned and headed for the spot where he had first stepped foot into the city, guided by the knowledge Arella had left with him.

* * *

He didn't have to wait long, as three glowing white doves could be seen coming towards him in the distance, with his friends in tow. When they neared him, the doves disappeared, and the four Titans were finally rejoined.

"Dude, you have no idea what I've seen!" Beast Boy told them all, panting and clutching at his chunk of golden stone.

Cyborg rolled his eyes and said to Beast Boy "We've all seen some hellish stuff, Beast. I'm just glad that those doves guided us back here. I think the three of us were totally lost until those birds caught our attention."

"Indeed! I am hoping that we now have the means of finding Raven!" Starfire chimed in.

Robin smiled at them, and told them "I think we do. Guys, take out your stones."

They did, and almost immediately, the four sections were drawn together, and after a massive flash of golden light erupted, a large golden talisman with more Azarathian runes etched on it fell into Robin's hand.

The four of them gawked at it, and Starfire murmured "Um, I think I can almost read these strange runes! This seems to be some odd object used for expelling evil."

Robin nodded satisfactorily, and said to them "This must be what we need to find Raven. I have a feeling that this talisman will light our way, so to speak."

He had hardly finished speaking when it began to glow brilliantly with more golden light, and a massive arc of energy sprung from it, sailing over their heads and east, towards the center of the city. The Titans chased after it, watching the arc strike what seemed to be a plain patch of metal ground.

All of a sudden, the site of the impact shattered, and red shards of what had apparently been a barrier collapsed to the ground before fading away. The Titans beheld a massive set of bronze stairs descending into a dark void, leading deep into what Arella had told Robin was the inner sanctum of Azarath.

Cyborg grimaced, and said to them all "This is it, guys. I'm damn certain that Raven's down there somewhere."

"You bet she is, and we're taking her back!" shouted Beast Boy, a fire glowing in his eyes as he growled low in this throat.

Starfire gulped and muttered "I just hope that we have faced enough terrifying monsters here."

Just as they were about to descend, they all jumped in shock as the prayer horn blared out over the city, rising and falling far more rapidly this time, and sounding desperate. Robin shuddered as he and his friends watched Azarath transform once more into the hellish version that had terrified them so much.

As the prayer horn continued to roar, the buildings all around them erupted into violent orange flames that consumed everything in sight. The metal creaked and screeched as the fire devoured it, and that blood-red scarlet corrosion began to spread out from the flames. Even the bronze steps of the stairs began to corrode itself with the ugly corruption, and the Titans could only watch in terror as the fires spawned the manifestations of Raven's nightmares.

From the flames emerged the screaming, inflamed wraiths, flailing around and wailing Raven's name. Mere moments after they appeared, demonic roars sounded in the distance, and the Titans saw the monstrous aberrations hobbling towards the center of the city. The prayer horn faded away, and with that, the four friends turned and fled down the rotting stairs into the darkness below.

" _It's time to end this!_ " Robin thought, as the talisman in his hand lighted the way, the Titans plunging further and further into the shadows.


	12. Core of the Nightmare

The four titans ran down the corroded steps, aching to finally find Raven after all of the horrors that they had seen. As they journeyed further downward, it seemed that the staircase would never end. Only the light from the talisman in Robin's hand enabled them to see where they were going.

Up ahead, a much larger step that looked like another platform rose into sight, and with it, another apparition. The group paused in confusion as they looked at themselves standing around a cowering Doctor Light, muttering incoherent words as Raven walked away into the alleyway of the surrounding buildings. They turned to her, and watched as the emotionless mask on her face changed into a look of sheer horror as she clutched at herself and whispered things under her breath.

"No!" she said, her eyes widening under her hood. "I let it out…I…thought I had my rage under control! Why…"

All at once, the entire image faded away, leaving the titans alone. They made themselves continue running down the steps, and Robin saw out of the corner of his eye that Beast Boy was clearly shaken. Robin remembered what Arella had said about the manifestations that Beast had dealt with, things based on Raven's repressed anger.

" _Looks like Beast just saw something that reaffirmed everything he saw back in the Temple."_

They kept running down more and more steps, the descent beginning to take a toll on all four of them. Robin and his friends were already panting and huffing from the seemingly endless journey downwards. All the while, his conversation with Arella replayed in his head, and no matter what he did to avoid remembering it, Robin couldn't stop the knowledge that Raven would die after the ritual was ruined from coming back into his mind. Even though he still had the hope and faith that Arella needed him to have in her plan to save her daughter, a sort of depression hung over him nonetheless.

" _Raven deserved so much better than this. Nobody deserves to constantly be ostracized by their peers, to be tormented by the people who were supposed to accept you from the beginning…and what Brother Blood did to her…that bastard!"_

After several more minutes of bolting down the steps, another large platform rose up ahead of the group. This one also had an apparition playing out, showing her fleeing away from the room where the titans had heard the ghosts recite that terrible prophecy in the bowels of Jump City's old library. The glowing red marks were on her body, and Raven was running up a small set of stairs, trying to cover up the runes with her cloak.

"This can't be happening!" they heard her say as she ran. "I don't want to fulfill it! I don't want to betray my friends!"

Like the previous scene, everything slowly faded out of sight, and the four titans did their best to continue running, as the weight of the images they had seen weighed over them.

" _I remember that. I tried to get her to tell me what was happening. After seeing what Trigon did to Earth, and knowing now what he did to Azarath…no wonder Raven was too scared to tell me."_

As they continued to run, the talisman illuminated another ledge coming up rapidly, and they braced themselves for something horrific. Instead, the image that appeared before them showed an apparition of Raven's room, with the girl asleep restlessly on her bed, tossing and turning.

While the titans paused in confusion to watch the image unfold, Raven suddenly awoke with a small shriek of terror, and she bolted upright, breathing rapidly with her eyes wide and skin covered in sweat. She began to shiver all over, and as the bedsheets fell away, the scarlet runes were revealed to be glowing all over her body once more. Raven managed only to move to the edge of her bed, where she sat, looking down at her hands, which had a similar rune emblazoned on them.

All they could do was watch as Raven began to sob, weeping and wailing as she shook. The apparition showed her crying for numerous minutes, before finally disappearing.

With difficulty, the titans made themselves continue their descent. All four of them were shaken by what they had seen, especially Beast Boy, who Robin could see was struggling not to cry too.

"Raven…I had no idea…" he whispered, tears budding at the corners of his eyes.

At last, the stairs ended, and the group hit even ground. Stretching out far beyond their sight was a towering room supported by dilapidated black pillars. The grisly, blood-colored corruption had reached down to the inner sanctum as well, everything in their field of vision looking rusted over with the stain. In the center of the massive room was a tiny red light, and Robin snarled in anger at the sight, knowing what it had to be.

" _It's him. That's the final barrier that Arella told me about. And that's where Raven has to be!"_

Robin turned to his friends, pointed at the light in the distance, and shouted "Head towards that light! I'm certain that she's there!"

They pounded forward, and as they drew closer, Robin could see that his guess had been correct. A glowing red barrier was humming around an emaciated man in a scarlet robe, hunched over a withered obsidian pedestal. Robin saw a black bundle on the pedestal, covered in the same runes that he had seen on Raven's body in the apparition moments before. The man looked up, and the four titans saw the skull paint on his face, recognizing the man with growls in their throats.

Brother Blood glared at them with equal parts terror and anger, as he snapped at them "How did you come down here? I had the entrance concealed with a barrier!"

Robin sneered at him and said "You were too arrogant, Blood. We ruined that barrier, and we're about to ruin this one, too."

"Don't be ridiculous!" the man shouted back. "This barrier is even stronger than the one that covered the stairs, and there's nothing you brats can do to destroy it! Raven is mine, and I won't let you interfere!"

Robin instinctively reached out and grabbed Beast Boy, who, as he suspected, was about to charge towards the cultist. Beast Boy glared at him, but all Robin did was shake his head firmly in response. He seized one of the shooting stars from his belt, and sent it flying at the barrier.

The instant the star collided, it burst into flames, and was quickly reduced to a pile of ash. Brother Blood sneered at them as Beast Boy shuddered, realizing that he would've suffered the same fate if Robin hadn't intervened. Cyborg and Starfire groaned in irritation, but Robin, knowing what Arella had revealed to him, knew that this barrier was doomed to fall just like the previous one.

"You really think that you're so safe behind that barrier, Blood?" Robin taunted him. "We can see how awful you look, how ruined you are. I'll bet big money that Azarath ambushed you and the other three scum who came down here, right?"

At that remark, Brother Blood shuddered violently, and a small drop of liquid fell near Robin's foot. He looked down at it, and saw that it was fresh blood. He looked up towards the ceiling, and when the other three followed his gaze, they all yelled in shock.

The three cultists were impaled upon long, metal spikes high up on the ceiling, their corpses bent over in permanent agony. Robin grimaced, and glared at Blood, who was still shuddering. Just as Arella had told him, Azarath had laid a violent trap for Brother Blood and his entourage, one that had probably fell upon them suddenly and with little warning.

"You can act all high and mighty behind that barrier, but the reality is that you're completely alone. Azarath itself has been thwarting your efforts to keep Raven trapped in this ritual of yours. And, as I'm sure you know, this place is still waiting for its chance to kill you next."

They all heard the metal spikes up above creak ominously as they subtly grew longer, pointed down at the quivering cultist and affirming Robin's words. Brother blood was paralyzed with fear, watching the spikes warily. Robin knew that there was also a chance that Azarath had been psychologically taunting him with supernatural horrors ever since he had been forced to throw up his second barrier in defense.

Blood turned back to them and screamed "So what?! Nothing this place can do, and no efforts of yours can break this barrier! I've used my strongest magic to create this, and there isn't anything that can pierce through it! Raven is mine! I will plunge her completely into the darkness with the knowledge that she's Trigon's daughter, and you can't hope to stop me!"

"If you believe that, then you're as mad as you look" Robin told him, as he took a step forward towards the barrier, and raised the talisman high.

The other three titans watched him warily, not knowing what he was about to pull. Brother Blood laughed at him harshly, pointing a crooked finger at the boy and sneering at him.

"What do you think you can do with a mere glowing stone?" he shouted with glee.

Robin ignored him and took a deep breath, the words that had been poured into his mind organizing themselves. The hymn stood in his mind perfectly, waiting for him to recite it. His friends watched him in confusion, not aware that he was prepared to wipe the sneer off of Blood's face. Robin's mind drifted to his teammate trapped in her nightmare on the pedestal, and cold fury welled up within him, along with a surge of power in his voice as he began.

" _The evil you face shall not overcome you, for we shall aid you in conquering it. By the light of the Divine, by the authority of the Throne, surrounded by the four guardians, your escape shall be determined. With the grace of the Eagle, the courage of the Lion, the strength of the Ox, and the humility of the Human, you shall be set free!"_

Behind him, the other titans stood silently, listening as he recanted the hymn that Arella had taught him. Behind the red portal, Blood howled with laughter as Robin spoke the words. Robin finished the stanza, not sure of what was meant to happen. Then, all five of them paused as echoing voices began to softly resound from all corners of the room.

"What?!" Brother Blood snarled as the voices drew closer.

Numerous glowing, white-robed figures began to manifest themselves into the inner sanctum, slowly walking towards the center of the room where Robin was standing, and singing along with his words in the Azarathian tongue, which sounded vaguely like Latin. Robin stood still, buoyed by the strange power of the hymn, while he heard his friends behind him gasp as together, Robin and the mass of Azarathians recanted the hymn together, the men, women and children of Azarath extending their hands out in a plea towards Raven.

" _Though the darkness may blind you, though your fears may suffocate you, we will not allow you to remain imprisoned. Although the enemy seeks to isolate you, we will rescue you from their insidious grip, and bring you back into the Light! By our decree, by the Power that guides us, so do we declare that your suffering shall end here and now!"_

Brother Blood screamed in rage as it began to finally dawn on him what was happening. All around them, the mass of Azarathians drew closer, numbering in the thousands and filling the inner sanctum with their light. Robin continued to shout the hymn, his voice turning into a bellow by its own accord as the power of the words amplified it. The talisman's light began to blare out, and to the shock of the titans and Blood, it rose into the air, coming to a stop several feet above them, and vaguely resembling a twelve-pointed star. Robin watched out of the corner of his eye as it slowly charged a massive beam of golden light.

" _Therefore we beg you, do not lose your hope, and trust in us who love you! Let your faith rest upon the Divine that cherishes you, and do not fear the shadows that seek to oppress you! O child of light and love, heed our words and allow us to help you break free! With the gaze of the Ultimate Authority upon you, let this darkness be banished forever!"_

With that, the talisman in the air released a brilliant beam of light that went flying straight towards Raven on the pedestal. Brother Blood snarled, and sent a violent orb of dark energy back at it, which destroyed the talisman, but not before it finished releasing its power. The beam struck Raven, and the bundle on the pedestal glowed with a wondrous brilliance. The mass of Azarathians clasped their hands in prayer, bowed towards her, and at once faded away, leaving Robin shaken with the finish of the hymn, and his friends gawking at the scene before them.

"YOU SCUM!" Brother Blood screamed at them, spit flying as his terror suddenly amplified. "ARELLA, DAMN YOU! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE?! NOW THE RITUAL WILL-"

His words were cut off by the golden light suddenly changing into a hideous vermillion. Without any further warning, flames erupted from the black bundle on the pedestal. Brother Blood fled several steps away from the pedestal as it was crushed by the fire, which quickly transformed into a massive pillar that stood several pillars tall. Everybody within the inner sanctum shuddered as a hideous growling could be heard within, and two pairs of glowing red eyes emerged from the fire.

The flames faded away, revealing Trigon, looking strangely malnourished, towering over them all, and roaring in rage. The titans looked up at him, shuddering as they recalled the difficulty of their first stand against him. Brother Blood quaked near his master's feet, and yelped as Trigon's anger-filled gaze fell upon him.

" **INCOMPETENT LITTLE INSECT!** " The demon bellowed, as scarlet flames charged in his hand.

Brother Blood attempted to plea with the monster, saying "M-master, please forgive me, I didn't think that Arella or these brats could-"

Before he could continue, Trigon swung his hand, in the fire in his palm fell upon the cultist. Brother Blood screamed and writhed in agony as he was burned alive in front of the titans, who could only watch in horror as he fell to the ground. After several seconds of wriggling in pain, he ceased moving, and Trigon turned to the titans with a sneer.

" **Do you really think that your attempt to force the ritual to instantly complete will allow you to defeat me? Raven is mine, and soon, I shall consume her entire being!** "

Together, the titans screamed back, "Like Hell we'll let you take her!" and began their attack.


	13. The Truth Will Set You Free

Starfire, her eyes glowing green, snarled and began unleashing a rapid barrage of star bolts at the fiend, zooming around and out of his grasp. Cyborg, Beast Boy and Robin charged forward, hoping that they could avoid being hit on the ground. Robin made himself focus on the monster before him, knowing that Raven was still alive, and still asleep within the confines of her nightmare.

"Guys, listen to me!" he shouted at his teammates. "Raven is still alive! From what I've learned, she's trapped in a nightmare right now, and it's up to us to help her wake up! It's up to her to defeat Trigon, like last time, but she needs our support to do it!"

"Well, how do we do that when we've got our hands full?!" Cyborg yelled back as he shot several missiles at Trigon, watching them explode on contact and make the demon grunt.

Beast Boy danced around Trigon's feet, shifting between various predatory forms, and shouting "Robin, be more specific!"

Starfire, still whirling around Trigon, yelled down at him "Please, Robin, we do not know what to do!"

Robin, doing his best to not let the anxiety of the battle overtake him, shouted "Did you listen to me say that hymn?! Do the same! Remind her that we're here by her side! Remind her that we're her friends! **Make her see that she isn't fighting this alone**!"

They nodded at him, and as they continued to fight, Robin began, hoping that Raven would hear him.

"Raven, listen to us! We know you're still there! I get it now, why you couldn't bring yourself to tell me about your mother, about what really happened here. I'm sorry that you were put through Hell by the people here! I'm so sorry that you had to suffer all of that, just because people saw you as different! But please, remember all the times that I've stood by your side! Remember when I refused to abandon you after you revealed what Trigon would use you for! Remember that I stood by your side, and helped you see that you could overturn the fate the prophecy had in store for you! I'm here to do it again, and I won't leave you!"

Trigon laughed harshly at him and bellowed " **Fool! You think that your pretty words can help her now?** "

Robin ignored him and whipped out his staff, deflecting Trigon's claws and striking at his heels, in an attempt to hold the monster off. Starfire watched him fight on the ground, and as she hurled her star bolts at the demon, she joined in.

"Raven, my friend! I, too, see why you were not willing to fully open up to me about this place! You believed that you were responsible for what happened here, but now, both of us know that this is a lie! This is a lie that that awful man attempted to use to hold you hostage! But now, you are free! Now, you know that it was not your fault that Trigon destroyed this place! You no longer need to hold on to your guilt! You do not need to fear the anger that Azar would hold against you, because she, too knows that you are innocent! All of them know you to be innocent! And I will destroy anybody who tries to lie that you are not! Raven, I will never abandon you my dearest friend, and I will stand beside you and help you heal! This, I promise!"

She barely avoided a swipe from Trigon's claw, and momentarily flew away to reassess her strategy. On the ground, the boys were still struggling to land blows, their attacks barely managing to faze the gigantic monstrosity.

Cyborg glanced up at Trigon, squinting, and preparing to add his own message.

"Please, Raven, don't give up! It's ok to admit that you're scared! You don't need to act fearless! I'm gonna keep you safe, just like I kept you safe from that bastard who tried to kill you with his sword! I won't give up on you Raven, not now, not ever! You're my teammate, you're my friend, and you're like a sister to me! There's no way that I'm letting this monster take you away from me! I'll help you own this bastard, just please trust me! Trust all of us! We love you, Raven! Being Trigon's daughter will never change that! It didn't change things back then, and it won't change anything now! We're here to help you conquer your fear, to give you the strength to win! You've got this, I know you do! And I won't let this monster beat you!"

Trigon snarled down at him and sent a ball of fire crashing down. Cyborg barely managed to roll away in time to avoid being hit, and in response, he let loose a powerful beam that hit Trigon in the chest, forcing the demon back. The three boys continued to scamper around the monster, desperately trying to keep calm.

With the other three already spoken their words, Beast Boy glared up at Trigon, and snarled at him defiantly as he began to speak.

"I'm here for you, Raven! I'm here for you, and there's nothing that can make that change! I get why you've always tried to suppress your anger, and I'm sorry that you weren't ok with expressing it! I know that you feel like a monster because of who your father is, and I understand that! Remember that you were there for me when I unleashed my own monster! You stood by my side and comforted me when I was left horrified by myself! And please, don't forget that you weren't alone after that asshole lied to you, when Malchior used you like he did! I was there to comfort you, and I'm here to do the same again! I'll stand by you forever, Raven, till the day I die, and beyond even that! I will never let this monster hurt you ever again, and you don't need to hide your true feelings anymore! So please, trust me, trust us, because we're about to set you free!"

Up above, Starfire was caught off guard by a backhanded swipe that sent her crashing to the ground, groaning and crumpled. Trigon used his eye beam to blast the three boys back, nearly knocking them out as they landed next to Starfire. The four titans shuddered as Trigon leered over them, fire building up in his hands as he raised his palms upwards, a massive fireball building up. The monster roared with laughter as he prepared a deathblow.

" **SO MUCH FOR YOUR PRECIOUS FRIENDS, DEAR DAUGHTER!** "

The titans looked up at him, and in desperation, hoping that she would hear them, shouted " **Raven!** "

Trigon laughed and suddenly paused, looking confounded. The four watched him warily as the fireball in his hands suddenly dissipated. As they lay slumped on the ground in confusion, Trigon failed to move, unblinking and looking almost like a statue.

All of a sudden, he began to roar in pain, clutching at his head as he struggled against an unseen force. He tried to summon more flames, but his attempt was instantly extinguished.

" **NO!** "

All four of them gasped as they recognized Raven's voice, shouting with a commanding fury that echoed across the inner sanctum. Trigon fell on his knees as he continued to roar. A small white light began to glow in the middle of his chest. The light was slowly spreading outwards, and it was clear that it was the source of the monster's agony.

The titans couldn't speak, as they were too shocked by the sight before them. As Trigon continued to struggle, her voice uttered something else in a much quieter, choked up whisper.

" **Guys…** "

At that, that white light instantly spread out and consumed Trigon from within. His screams turned into the high, melancholic cawing of Raven's white spirit form as it raised its wings and head triumphantly. For several seconds, it stood towering over them, before it shimmered away softly.

When the light disappeared, she emerged from the glow, cloaked in white like she had been long before, and gasping desperately as she looked around her in bewilderment. Her eyes fell upon her friends before her, and she paused as she realized what had happened.

And then, the look of shock on her face changed into immense joy as she gave them a warm grin. Raven began to weep and sob tears of relief, and her friends quickly followed suit. Beast Boy and Starfire beamed down at her, tears spilling over their own cheeks that the sight of their friend finally freed. Cyborg grinned at her, struggling not to cry, as Robin gave her a relaxed smile. After hours of facing the nightmares that Azarath had shown to them, after facing her demonic father for a second time, the Teen Titans were reunited, with Raven's soul successfully rescued from Trigon's grasp.

After a minute of gasping through her tears, Raven managed to speak.

"Y-you…you all…you…c-came… **came for me! You r-really came for me!** "

They all laughed gently with her, and Beast Boy told her through his own tears "Of course we did, you silly goose! You're our teammate after all!"

Though nobody took it seriously, the inner sanctum was rumbling around them as pieces of the ceiling crashed in the distance. Robin knew what it had to mean, but refused to dwell on it, only wanting to enjoy the long desired reunion before him.

Starfire beamed at her and whispered "It so good to see you again, my friend. At last, you are free!"

"And it's time to get you outta here!" Cyborg shouted joyously.

All Robin could do was nod at her, aching to avoid the inevitable revelation that was coming quickly. Raven continued to weep as she looked up at her friends, still smiling up at them. She managed to make herself sit up, and she clasped her hands together in what looked like prayer. The other titans watched her in befuddlement.

"I…there's something I need to return to you guys" she said softly, and a brilliant white light covered her hands as the inner sanctum continued to collapse around them.

It took only a few seconds for the light to fade away, and when it did, it revealed a rectangular package in a white cloth in her hands. Raven beamed up at Robin, and handed it to him. He took it warily, knowing with dread what it had to be, and that if he opened it then and there, he would collapse into a deep grief. Raven gave him a deliberate nod, as if she already knew that he was aware of the contents.

They watched her silently as she told them "I can't…I can't thank you all enough for what you did for me. I'm finally free. That nightmare no longer has any grip on me. And I can feel within me that Trigon's grasp on me is truly gone for good. I feel so…light. So happy. So…free."

Beast Boy grinned and said "Good! Now let's go home, Raven!"

She turned to him with her smile and gently told him "Oh, Beast Boy. I'm sorry, but I won't be returning home with you four."

Robin felt his stomach drop as Arella's warning came back to mind, and he watched his teammates gawk at Raven.

"What the hell do you mean, you're not coming home with us?!" Cyborg shouted at her. "This isn't funny, Raven!"

"Friend, what are you…?!" Starfire tried to say, looking utterly shocked.

Raven softly told them "Guys, it's time for me to finally move on. To rejoin everybody that perished all those years ago. This is goodbye."

Robin frowned bitterly, and the other three took a moment longer to let her words sit in fully. Beast Boy couldn't even speak, his mouth agape in horror as he shook his head back and forth rapidly, trying to deny what he had just heard. The other two began to sputter incoherent words at Raven, madly attempting to avoid her revelation.

"N-no! Raven, please! Not after all this! You, you c-can't die on us, please!" Starfire pleaded, sobbing anew.

"Dammit Raven, don't do this! You don't need to do this, we're not going to let you get hurt anymore!" Cyborg shouted.

She continued to smile at them, and she gently told them "The ritual took away my body, but thanks to you all, my soul is saved, and I'm finally at peace. I can finally see my mother again…"

They watched as, in affirmation, her form began to look translucent, and Raven was starting to look like a ghost. Beast Boy wailed in agony and threw himself at her feet, reaching shaky arms out to her as he tried to speak.

"R-raven, I…I'm begging you, stay with us! I promise, I'll stand by your side no matter what, I'll keep you safe from everything and everyone! I'll be with you wherever you go, I'll shield you from anything that tries to hurt you! You can trust me! So…please!"

He sobbed and shouted " **Please, I don't want to fail you too!** "

Raven hushed him gently and placed a hand on his cheek. Beast Boy and the others stood silently as she looked into his eyes and tried to wipe away his tears, her fading hand unable to truly touch him. Robin was barely holding himself together, as he knew at last what Arella had meant by "reasons that he did not see".

"Beast Boy, you didn't fail me. You never did, and I never lost faith in your desire to keep me safe. I knew after seeing you unleash that beast for my sake that you care about me deeply, and I care so much about you too. I'm not leaving you because I don't trust you, I'm leaving because this is what was meant to happen. You were one of the best friends that I could've ever asked for. Like you said, you were there for me when I was heartbroken, and I'll never forget the good luck penny you gave me as your way of comforting me, before I fell to that prophecy. And Beast Boy…"

They watched as she bent forward, and said something to him that only he could hear. Whatever she said elicited an agonized gasp from him, and Raven looked at her other three friends, still wearing that peaceful smile.

"Thank you all, for the love you never stopped showing me. You can't stay here, though. Azarath, because it was tied to my life, is also dying, and it can't guarantee that you won't get hurt in its self-destruction. I'll help you get back to the Tower."

She pointed away from them, towards one of the corners of the sanctum, and a white portal, looking just like the one used to take them to Azarath, appeared. They all looked at her, and she nodded encouragingly.

"Never forget that I love you all, each of you. We will always be the Titans, no matter what happens. **Forever and always.** "

The titans looked at the portal, and back at Raven, who gave them another nod, and softly said "It's ok."

Starfire gulped back her tears, and said to her "Then…if this is to be…farewell, Raven. You will always be my teammate."

Cyborg gritted his teeth, and told her "Ugh…I…I'll miss you always."

Beast Boy refused to leave her side, and Raven gently told him "Please, Beast Boy, I promise you that this is what's meant to be."

He could only shake his head in more denial, even as Cyborg told him "Let's go, Beast."

" **No, please!** " he shouted at them, struggling as Cyborg had to seize him in his arms.

Robin whispered to her "Goodbye, Raven" and she beamed up at him, a knowing gleam in her eyes.

The titans began to run towards the portal, Beast Boy still struggling to escape Cyborg's arms.

" **RAVEN!** " he wailed at her, reaching out towards her in vain as he moved further and further from her.

"Goodbye" they heard her whisper as they moved out of hearing range.

The ceiling continued to crash in pieces around them as the floor rumbled ominously. Beast Boy was now collapsed in Cyborg's arms, weeping and shaking silently. Starfire was doing her best to not let her tears blind her, and Cyborg was on the verge of weeping himself. As for Robin, he was holding the package close, and hoping that he could hold back his own grief for the time being.

A sudden booming noise was heard just over their heads, and they looked up in horror to see a massive piece of ceiling rapidly falling over them. The titans yelled out and put their hands up in a hopeless attempt to protect themselves. All around them, a white light flashed, filling their vision and blinding them for a few seconds.

When they opened their eyes, all of the chunks were floating in midair, coveted in the white light. The piece over their heads was suspended, and it was clear that they were somehow safe. The titans gawked up at it, trying to understand what had happened, and together, they whirled around.

Sure enough, there she was, looking like she was waving goodbye at them. Her extended hand was glowing with the white light, her peaceful smile still on her face. At the sight before them, Cyborg finally lost it, weeping as they made themselves continue running towards the portal. They finally ran up to it, and they passed through it, feeling the crackle of energy as they walked through to the other side.

* * *

Raven watched her friends pass through the portal, and the swirling energy disappeared. She let her hand fall to her side, and Azarath resumed its dying process. Despite its death throes, it refused to accidently harm its last daughter.

Raven let herself lay on the floor, at peace and waiting to cross over.

" _I'm really free. After all of that…my soul is finally free from his taint. Brother Blood couldn't keep his grip on me, thanks to them. I can finally…"_

At last, a soft white light fell over the inner sanctum, and Raven could feel Azarath fading away. In her mind's eye, Raven beheld a beautiful city made of precious gemstones coming towards her, with a throng of people robed in white standing before it. Raven could see all the generations of Azarath waiting to greet her, beaming at her eagerly. In the front, she saw the three Azars floating in midair, thrilled to see their daughter finally at peace.

And standing at the front of the throng was her mother, tears of joy slipping down her smiling face as she held her arms open, waiting to embrace her child once more.

Raven closed her eyes, and felt her spirit moving towards the New Azarath, the ultimate paradise that her people had desired for so long.

" _Mother…Azar…everybody…_ _ **I'm coming home.**_ _"_


	14. At the Nightmare's End

The portal fizzled shut behind them, and the titans collapsed in their living room. Robin sat wearily on one of the couches, gazing down at the package in his hands, not willing to open it front of his teammates and break down himself. Standing around were Cyborg and Starfire, sobbing together as they tried to move towards their rooms. Beast Boy was gazing away from them, still stunned, and still weeping silently.

"Um…if anybody needs me, I'll be in my room…" Cyborg muttered quietly, and he hobbled away, wiping away his tears.

Starfire floated after him, whispering "So shall I…", and quivering from her grief.

Robin and Beast Boy were left alone in the living room. Out of the corner of his eye, Robin could see that his teammate was now glaring at him, his fury palpable through his teary eyes. Beast Boy was huffing and puffing with the anger building inside of him, and Robin waited with bated, tense breath for him to finally let loose.

" **You knew!** "

The harsh words made Robin bow his head in shame, as Beast Boy started to scream at him.

"That whole time, you knew that Raven was going to die, and you didn't even tell us! We went in there thinking that we were gonna save her and bring her home, but you refused to warn us ahead of time! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Robin couldn't bring himself to speak up. He continued to look down at the white package, knowing that Beast Boy was completely right, and that the accusation was justified.

"You basically lied to all of us, Robin! Why didn't you tell us?!"

All he did was bite his lip, and softly say to Beast Boy "Because her mother told me not to."

Beast Boy gawked at him, his rage dissipating for a moment, and muttered "W-what?"

Robin grimaced, and told him "Just before you three were guided back to the center of the city by those doves, I was pulled aside by the spirit of Arella, Raven's mother. It was she who healed me, it was she who opened the portal to Azarath. All this time, she guided us around Azarath, helping us find clues on what happened, and how to help Raven. At the end of my talk with her, after she told me that Raven was meant to die as a result of that ritual, she begged me not to tell any of you, because you would lose hope. And…she begged me especially to not tell you, Beast. She said…she said that your grief would be the deepest out of all of us, because of reasons…that I can't…see…"

He finally looked Beast Boy in the face, and asked him "Beast Boy…did you…?"

His teammate glared at him again, and managed to whisper through his tears " **Of course I did.** "

"Raven stood by my side when I let out the monster in me. Even when I nearly endangered her life, she defended me, because she knew that my base desire was to protect her through any means necessary. She never lost faith in me, and after helping her heart heal after she was lied to by that piece of shit Malchior, we bonded deeply. And now…she's gone…"

Beast Boy shuddered with his grief and said " **Every time I…they…** " and let out a long wail of unspeakable agony, as Robin could only watch.

For a few moments, all that transpired between them was Beast Boy sobbing loudly, and Robin unable to think of something to say that would comfort his wounded friend. He fumbled around with his hands, desperately trying to come up with something.

"At least…she's at peace" he sheepishly muttered to Beast.

His teammate merely threw his hands up in the air helplessly, and walked away towards his room, his sobs echoing behind him. Robin was left alone with the package, which he knew was bound to make him weep as well. He looked down at it, and bit his lip in hesitation.

" _It's time. They're gone for now, and they won't have to hear me…"_

Robin unfolded the soft white covering surrounding the package, and let it drop to the floor.

* * *

In his room, Beast Boy sat in his bed, his tears slowly starting to dry as he breathed slowly. The reality of their loss was fully sinking in on him, and all he wanted was to reverse time and bring his best friend back.

" _She said that I didn't fail her. She really was at peace. So…I guess Robin is right. But still…I wish it didn't have to end like that. I know that she's happy, wherever she is. Just like_ _ **she**_ _is happy now, too. I know they wouldn't want me to keep beating myself up like this. I just…I wanted happier futures for both of them. And Raven…if only I could've been there to help her during her time on Azarath…I…"_

As he continued to dwell on her, animalistic wailing could suddenly be heard from the living room, making Beast Boy bolt upright. He yanked open his door and fled down the hall, with Cyborg and Starfire in close pursuit.

"Is that Robin?!" Cyborg asked them as they ran.

"It has to be!" Starfire told them. "There is no other person in the living room! But for him to cry like this? It has to be something very bad indeed!"

They ran, and came back into the living room, where Robin was curled up on the sofa, waling and covering his face as he wept. The other Titans stood over him in shock as they registered how upset he seemed to be.

"Dude, it'll be ok" Beast Boy said to him as gently as he could. "It's like you said, she's at peace. Just let it all out like we did."

Starfire raised her head and quirked an eyebrow at something next to Robin. She jumped over the sofa, and seized from the table what looked to be their group photo. She turned to them, and looked back down at Robin with a very confused look on her face.

"Robin, were you reminiscing over our group photo? Perhaps it would be better right now for you to look away. Maybe in a few days you can…"

Cyborg and Beast Boy gawked as her face changed from confusion to immense grief again, and she nearly dropped the photo in shock before Beast Boy jumped over the sofa and caught it. He placed an arm around her shoulder, and tried to comfort her.

"Star, what's wrong?!"

Cyborg also jumped over, and leaned in, trying to get a look as he said "Guys, it's just the group photo, why are you-"

And then, the two boys realized why Robin and Starfire were now both sobbing profusely. Their own tears started to flow thickly again, as they placed tender hands on the photo. They hadn't noticed the difference until they had peered closely at the image.

Where Raven had once stood emotionless in the corner of her photo, wearing her stereotypical blank expression, a new form had replaced her. Instead of the Raven they had seen for years, a gently smiling face beamed up at them, with her white robe slightly glowing in the background. And at the bottom of the photo, emblazoned in a glowing blue script was the following words:

" **Forever and Always"**


End file.
